


Doctor meets doctor

by marysutherland



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Bodyswap, M/M, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-29
Updated: 2011-12-03
Packaged: 2017-10-26 16:57:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 25,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/285685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marysutherland/pseuds/marysutherland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU body-swap fic, set mainly during "A Study in Pink".<br/>Inspired by the Martin Freeman/Rachael Stirling comedy drama "Boy meets Girl".</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Betaed by [kalypso_v](http://kalypso-v.livejournal.com/), queen of the comma.

Molly Hooper has let Sherlock Holmes do a lot of strange experiments in the morgue over the last few years, but she's pretty sure that this is going to be the one that gets her into serious trouble. If she'd only refused him at an earlier stage. She's not good at saying 'no' to him, but this time she should have done.

She initially assuages her guilt by telling herself it isn't actually in the morgue that he's building this _thing_ , but the room between the morgue and the lab that isn't technically part of any department, because it's so small and grotty that not even Barts can turn it into an office. But she knows that when something goes wrong – as it will – and there is an investigation, she will get the blame. Sherlock can talk his way out of anything, after all. Or his brother will smooth things over for him, as he's done before, buy off Barts with another six figure donation from the Holmes Trust, as the family slush fund is called. It's her that will be made the scapegoat, for allowing Sherlock Frankenstein to play mad scientist in the basement.

If she only knew what he's doing, she'd know who to turn to, but the moment she tells anyone else at Barts that the locked room isn't just full of broken equipment she has already committed herself, blown a whistle into the unknown. She needs someone to talk to who isn't part of the establishment. Someone with medical knowledge, though.

So when Mike brings the stranger in one day, and introduces her to him, she pricks up her ears. He's trained here, and he's impressed by her shiny new morgue, but he's unemployed, she gathers, and hence unaffiliated. Or did Mike say something about him being in the army? Before she can ask, the man – Dr Watson, she thinks – is whisked off by Mike to meet Sherlock. When Mike and Dr Watson emerge from the lab, Sherlock has already taken over half the morgue analysing his flogging results, and Molly sees her chance.

"Would you like to come upstairs and have some coffee, Dr Watson?" she asks. "If that's OK, Mike? I can show you round a bit more and then see you out." Mike accepts slightly too quickly, and she takes Dr Watson off to the lift, because his leg must be killing him. He looks slightly stunned, as well. Sherlock tends to have that effect on people.

"Call me John," Dr Watson says in the lift. "And you're Molly, aren't you?" He's smiling at her even though she hasn't got the lipstick on any more. And if he's Mike's friend, he's probably a _nice_ man; most of Mike's friends are. She thinks she can trust him.

"Is it a long time since you've seen Mike?" she asks, once they get to the canteen.

"Yes," he says, with an attempt at a smile. "Ten years, at least. He says he's got fat, but then I've got shot, so he's probably had the best of the bargain. I...I think he found it a bit hard seeing me like this, it's dawned on him that I'm not the John Watson he knows any more."

 _Poor man_ , she thinks, and says hastily, "Can you grab a table while l get the coffees?" John immediately gets that slightly awkward look of a man who thinks he ought to offer to pay for the drinks, but doesn't have much money – she's dated enough students over the years to know that look.

"It's on me," she says. "The least I can do for a war hero," and she winces at that line. But John just looks at her stoically, says "Thanks", and goes and sits down.

She'd been planning to talk to him, get to know him a bit before asking him to help her, but she can't think of anything to say that won't sound either patronising or pathetic. So when she sits down, she simply asks: "What did you think of Sherlock?"

"Is Mr Holmes always like that?" he says. "Coming out with those weird statements about you that happen to be accurate? It's as if he's five minutes further into a conversation you didn't even know you were having."

"He's brilliant," she replies. "Completely mad, but brilliant. Just...amazing." Because he is, even if he is building something deadly next to her morgue.

"The completely mad's a little worrying," John replies, smiling, "given I've just agreed to go and see a flat with him tomorrow evening."

She decides then. Never mind anything else, John has to know what kind of man he's getting involved with. Before Sherlock decides to try the thing in the basement out on him.

"You're an army doctor, aren't you?" she says. "You've seen strange things, haven't you, maybe even bad things?"

"Too many," he says, and she can hear the tension in his voice.

"Do you know anything about weapons?" she asks, "or torture?" His face barely moves, but she can see that one of his hands is shaking. "I'm sorry," she says hastily, "I shouldn't have mentioned that."

"Why are you asking about torture?" John says, and there's a sudden crispness to his voice that sounds military again. "Dr Hooper, Molly, if you're worried about something you've heard or seen, I think you should tell me."

"Sherlock's building something in the basement. I think it's for an experiment. An experiment on _living_ people," she blurts out.

"I see," he says, slowly. "And I presume he hasn't told the ethics committee anything about it?" She shakes her head. "OK, we should go and talk to him. I can understand you not wanting to confront him alone, but that's the obvious starting point."

"No. It might...it might not be anything bad. I don't want to get him into trouble. If we could just work out what he's doing first..."

"In that case, I suggest we wait till he leaves Barts and then investigate," he replies. "And don't worry about telling me. Sherlock did say that potential flatmates should know the worst about one another."

***

By the time Molly gets back to the morgue, Sherlock's already disappeared, though there's a note telling her he'll be back at 5 p.m. So she fetches John from the canteen, because it's a chance for him to see the thing. She's seen it being built, part of her is almost used to it by now, but she realises as she unlocks the tiny room that it must seem particularly bizarre if you're seeing it all at once for the first time. There's a lot of IT equipment, plus enough cables to rewire half of Barts. But in the centre there's also something like a dentist's chair, only with padded metal loops where the wrists and ankles would go. And some of the wires are attached to the chair. A dentist's chair for someone whose teeth need electrocuting. 

"Well it's almost certainly not an electric chair," John says, after inspecting the contraption for a while, "and I don't _think_ it's some kind of BDSM kit."

She knows she's blushing. "What makes you think that?" she asks, trying to sound like a woman who's happy discussing that sort of thing.

"I'd imagine there would be more, erm, spiky bits or...straps," he replies. "I think straps come into that sort of thing a lot. The restraints don't look right, somehow, if they are restraints. And the other thing is, that piece of kit in the corner, isn't that some kind of capacitor? Your boss isn't trying to reanimate corpses with lightning, is he?"

"He's not my boss," she protests, annoyed that she hadn't recognised that bit of the set-up. "He's not even one of the staff. He just comes in and does things here, and we...let him."

"I see," John says, frowning. "No, actually, I don't. But he could get access to medical equipment elsewhere in Barts if he wanted to, could he? If he had any normal experiments to do?"

"I think so. Why?"

"Most of this – if you ignore the power generating side – looks like some kind of brain imaging system. You see this on the floor?" He picks up something lurking under the chair that resembles a hairnet made of electrodes. "That's what they use for cognitive science studies, isn't it? Some sort of EEG?"

"Dense array electroencephalography," she says. "And that would explain all the computer power required. Why didn't I realise that?"

"I think perhaps you were panicking a bit," he says smiling, and then the smile abruptly vanishes. "And I'm not sure you weren't right to. You don't need restraints for EEG imaging, you don't even need the person to sit still."

"It could be a new variant," she says eagerly. "Perhaps Sherlock's found some way of improving spatial resolution or recording sensitivity more generally." She makes a quick decision. "If we give it a try, we can see what he's doing." She'll know for sure then that what Sherlock's up to is OK. More than that, she'll _understand_ his experiment. She might even be able to make some helpful suggestions to him.

"OK," John replies, "if Sherlock will be all right with that."

"It's my morgue," she says firmly. "There should be some conductive gel around." When she finds it, she smears it hastily on the electrodes of the 'hairnet' and then starts to put it on her head. Really, it should all be done much more slowly and carefully, but for all her bravado, she'd rather not have Sherlock turning up while she's actually playing with his equipment.

"If you like I can be the one getting imaged," John says. "If you don't want to get your hair gunky."

"I'm fine!" she says hastily, because he's a war veteran, and probably quite badly traumatised, from the way his hand shakes, and she doesn't want him freaking out in the chair and hurting himself. "And I don't really understand the IT side," she says, trying to sound helpless.

"OK," John says, as she gets into the chair. "What do you want me to do?"

"Can you turn the thing on, please?"

John's still gazing dubiously at the machine, and she realises it's probably him who's baffled by computers. 

"The on switch is at the bottom right," she tells him, "and I don't think the system is password protected." She's surreptitiously watched Sherlock working on the machine occasionally, and she suspects he won't have bothered with that. Because she's the only other person who knows the machine is there, and he wouldn't expect her to touch his experiments.

As John fumbles with the controls, Molly lies down, slips her arms and legs into the restraining loops, and finally realises what's so odd about them.

"They're quite loose fitting, and there's no way of tightening them that I can see," she says. "That's odd, isn't it?"

"Yes, they wouldn't stop you moving around, would they? So what are they supposed to do?"

"I'm not sure," she says. "What's coming up on the monitors?"

"There's a whole load of fancy touchscreen stuff," John replies, "most of which makes no sense to me. But there's one panel which has a whole series of controls for input voltages. Why would an EEG need that?"

It suddenly fits together with the restraints that don't restrain; she wonders what it would be like to see her brain at that moment, as it solves the problem.

"If...if you were convulsing, the chair would protect you, stop you hurting yourself," she says and adds triumphantly. "You were wrong about it being an EEG. Sherlock's not just trying to observe brains, he's trying to change them."

"What do you mean?"

"The electrodes on my skull, they're intended to produce tiny electric fields. Transcranial stimulation, I think it's called. You can use it to target particular areas of the brain, knock out people's speech centres, for example."

"Seems a bit of a drastic way to get someone to stop talking. But I have vaguely heard of the technique."

Something else is nagging at the back of Molly's mind, and it's not just an electrode. Then she remembers.

"They've used it to treat mental health problems," she said. "Depression, I think, and autism. They've suggested it can temporarily increase empathy, and...oh." She comes to a halt.

"What is it?" John asks sharply.

"Sherlock, he's, he's a bit, I'm sure it's not really sociopathy, but he's...different. Maybe this is intended to modify his personality."

"Or someone else's," John replies grimly. "Right. This is where we put the whole thing down and back away slowly." His hand reaches down towards the controls...

It's at this moment that Molly realises she's made two huge mistakes. One is assuming that Sherlock cares anything about electrical safety. The other is letting a man whose hand is shaking quite badly near a touchscreen. She is somehow not surprised when extra parts of the machine suddenly start humming as John frantically tries and fails to switch everything off. In fact it's so oddly inevitable that Sherlock's machine is going to turn on her that she's slow at pulling her arms out of the restraints, at tearing the clinging hairnet off her head. John has already raced round, has a hand under the web of electrodes, trying to remove it, when the flash comes and overwhelms them both.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Never let a man with a hand tremor near one of Sherlock's contraptions.

As Molly tries to escape from Sherlock's machine, there is retina-searing brightness and then darkness and she waits for the pain to come. But though she abruptly feels like she's a rubber band being snapped, it's only for a moment, and then the lights come back on. The hospital's backup generators are working and she's alive. The problem is she is looking down at Molly, who is still lying there in the chair.

A near-death experience, her mind reasons with odd clarity. Or possibly a death experience. Isn't she supposed to cling to life? But she's not sure she wants to. She looks round to see if there are angels or bright lights, or a skeleton talking in CAPITALS, and decides just to float away from Molly's body, abandon it.

But she isn't floating, she's stumbling, and when she looks down, she has legs, but they're not her legs. She raises someone else's hands to her view – though they look oddly familiar, because she's just watched them cause chaos on a touchscreen. Whatever is going on, it's not an out-of-body experience.

She lurches to the morgue's small toilet to find the mirror. Looks in it to see the bewildered face of Dr Watson staring back and promptly throws up in the sink. She closes her eyes, because clearly while she's mostly OK her visual cortex has been fried. Then she braces herself, and opens them again, because she has to be brave. When she looks up she sees John Watson's shocked grey eyes looking into hers. When she looks down she sees his lunch in the sink.

 _His_ lunch, she registers suddenly; she didn't have carrots. And while she knows that the mind can believe many strange things, that she can hallucinate someone else's vomit does seem peculiarly unlikely. It's more plausible that she's now somehow occupying Dr Watson's body.

Not possible, of course, but plausible. It's the best impossible hypothesis she currently has, which is something. So if Sherlock's personality-changing machine has gone haywire and swapped her mind for someone else's, what next? She looks in the mirror again and sees John Watson thinking, which involves rather a lot of frown lines. More than on Molly's face, which is currently missing. Oh, but that's OK, because she knows where she's seen that last.

She walks – not quite staggering – back to where Molly's body is still lying in the chair. Despite a certain amount of charring of the computer equipment, she looks untouched, lying peacefully there. Which probably means she...it...somebody is dead.

But when she touches the body – it only occurs to her afterwards that she could have electrocuted herself via herself – Molly's breathing, and she can feel a pulse. There's even a minute sigh as she presses on one of her nailbeds. Alive, but deeply unconscious, she needs specialist help quickly.

She hurries across to her office to phone reception – quicker than 999 – but as the phone starts to ring, she abruptly realises just what a mess she's in. There is an experiment gone badly wrong down here, which has probably blown half the power in Barts, there is an unconscious woman who used to be her and she's stuck in someone else's body. She can't easily explain this one away.

So when reception answers, John's voice simply yells: "Medical emergency in the morgue, trauma and suspected brain injury," and slams the phone down on their enquiries about who the caller is and what's happening. Then she grabs her handbag from the locker and heads off. She can get out via the side entrance, then she won't have to pass reception.

She's halfway through punching the security code into the door when she notices she's doing it left-handed. But her left hand feels _right_ , and she's striding along the corridors faster than she normally does; a few extra inches of leg definitely help. When she's outside, she moves her handbag into her left hand, it'll be more secure.

 _Her handbag._ She is in John Watson's body, carrying a handbag belonging to Molly Hooper, who is lying unconscious in the morgue. That really doesn't look good. She needs to get rid of that, but first she needs to work out what the hell she's doing next. If she can just get back to her own flat, she can leave the bag there, find something less conspicuous. So the first thing is to get back there...

Where she will probably get arrested for breaking and entering. She is not Molly Hooper at the moment, she is John Watson, to all appearances. So where would he go? She finds a hidden corner of the site and digs rapidly into John Watson's pockets. Not much money, but a fancy phone, last year's pocket diary – transferring its data into the fancy phone obviously still beyond him technically – an Oyster card and some house keys. They're no use, unless she can somehow work out where he lives.

She starts going through the diary. Next of kin given as Harry Watson, with a London number, might be worth trying in an emergency. She has the feeling he hasn't been in London for long and when she flicks back through the diary she sees a string of entries for November that look like places he's looked for flats in: Leytonstone, Catford, Kilburn. Several entries scrubbed out, but the last one is underlined several times: _10.30 am, 68A Jackson Rd, N7_.

It's a risk, but she can't think of anywhere better to try, and she can't just hang around the hospital. She should ditch her handbag, though, and she can't really carry the contents in his, her, his pockets. Besides, what's it worth hanging onto? Not even the keys to her flat, probably, because there's always the hidden set. And if they – someone - does come after her, she'll be in big trouble if she's found with someone else's keys in her pocket. She daren't take her own phone either, the pink makes it far too conspicuous for a man. What was she thinking of when she got it? In the end, all she fishes out is the spare cash. And then she walks round the building, towards Smokers' Corner and the pariahs of Barts.

There aren't many of them, but there's one she recognises and it's a surprise. She didn't know Ian Scott Paston from Geriatrics was a smoker, but there his vast, craggy figure is, puffing away. She goes up to him and says: "Excuse me."

He looks down at her and she waits, because he's a colleague of long-standing, and he _ought_ to recognise her. But instead he's just looking blankly at John Watson, and saying, rather brusquely: "What do you want?"

"I found this bag," John Watson's voice says, and his hands hold it out. "It was dumped by a door round there, thought it might have been stolen from the building."

Paston bends down and takes the bag from her – it's frustrating that she's still so short – and then rapidly starts examining its contents.

"Very public spirited of you to hand it in, sir," he says. "Yes, it belongs to Dr Molly Hooper, from Pathology. I know her. If you just come with me, we'll get it logged at reception, so she can get it back. Big relief to her, no doubt."

"I, I have to get on, I'll leave it with you," she replies hurriedly, and walks away. Paston doesn't bother to follow her – or rather John Watson. Because now she _knows_ she's John Watson. It's the sheer banality of what's happening that convinces her: a dream, a hallucination would have something more lurid, more meaningful in it than an encounter with an eminent gerontologist who's a secret smoker. She's not crazy, even if her world is. But maybe she is about to do something crazy, she thinks as she heads for the tube, trying to persuade John's phone to tell her the station she needs for Jackson Road.

***

Somewhere between St Paul's and Holloway Road she abruptly stops worrying about being taken for a criminal, and decides to become one. She's been a good girl, Little Miss Perfect, all her life and look where it's got her. Electrocuted in her own morgue. But she's got a second chance and she's going to take it. John Watson is unconscious, possibly even dead, in her body, and she is going to take his life over, because it sounds more interesting than her own.

So what has she got to work with, she thinks, as she stands in the train. No-one's offering her a seat, of course, despite John's bad leg. Oh. She realises she's been missing one thing all this time. She doesn't have his cane and she doesn't seem to need it.

She's pretty sure she has got the rest of Dr Watson's body. She's even flatter-chested than before, and she's fairly certain there's a penis down there somewhere. It's John's voice she hears – allowing for the distorting effect you always get from hearing your own voice – and she seems to be instinctively left-handed now. Her body, his body, also somehow seems firmer, moves slightly more decisively, as if there's some very peculiar muscle memory going on. So why doesn't his body remember to limp? And then she hears Sherlock's voice in her head: _Psychosomatic limp_.

Maybe she is hallucinating after all, if she's hearing Sherlock's voice. But she's not hearing it, she suddenly realises, she's remembering it. When he came back into the morgue, after he'd been talking to Dr Watson, he was muttering something about psychosomatic limps, and possible treatment for them. So maybe that's it. Maybe the limp's in John's mind, not his body. Bad news for him, good news for her.

***

Molly's pleasure at finding that 68A Jackson Road is where John lives is dampened by the fact that it's a horrible place. The drab brown tidiness of the bedsit is awful. Has she really abandoned her own flat, her own life for this? Still, she wants adventure, and she can always start looking for something better. Though she's not sure how much money he has. Maybe a flatshare...

And then she remembers. John Watson has a possible flatmate already: Sherlock Holmes. He was going to look at a flat with him tomorrow, wasn't he? Well that's that, then, her bubble burst. If she goes to meet Sherlock tomorrow, he'll spot her. If she doesn't go, Sherlock or Mike Stamford will probably come and look for her – for John Watson – and spot her. The joke's on her, after all.

No, she decides, it's not. She can't hope to fool Sherlock for long, but maybe she can do it for a few minutes. Just long enough to make her feel clever, feel his equal for once. Long enough to get his interest. Sherlock isn't interested in Molly Hooper, but maybe he is in John Watson. And how can he not be fascinated by the scientific mystery of Molly Hooper in John Watson? But she wants things to happen on her own terms, to intrigue him first before she reveals exactly what's happened. She’s going to pretend to be John Watson, just for a bit.

***

It's ridiculous, of course, she promptly realises, she can't possibly do it. How can she pass for a male ex-army doctor? She may have John's body, but she doesn't really know the first thing about him, other than he's got a father or brother called Harry. Maybe there are more photos somewhere, she thinks, maybe she could at least see what his life is like before she abandons it, as she must. She opens a drawer in the desk. There's a laptop in there and she starts to pull it out. And then she sees what's hidden beneath the laptop. And as she gazes at the pistol, a voice within her says: _Well, that's one thing we've got in common, at least. We both know our way around a gun_.

***

It's seven years now since her stint in the US but it seems more like a lifetime. She still sometimes tells people about her fellowship in North Carolina, talks about Duke University Hospital and how much she learned there, even occasionally admits to a craving for funnel cake with powdered sugar. But she never tells people in England how skilled she used to be with a handgun, or the pleasure she got from shooting.

It was Roy the Redneck who taught her to shoot, though she knows that she shouldn't remember him like that, that anyone who got himself a teaching job at Duke Medical School couldn't be a simple country boy, whatever he pretended. But he'd played up to the Southern stereotypes, and that, she found, included making sure his new English girlfriend knew how to protect herself against 'undesirables'. She felt uncomfortable about his prejudices, but she'd loved learning to shoot: the precision, the concentration of it. Even after she and Roy had broken up, she'd kept the gun he bought her, carried on going to meetings of the Ladies' Handgun League.

And then Miss Molly Hooper, that bizarre amalgam of Scarlett O'Hara and Annie Oakley, had come back to the UK, where pistol shooting was illegal, and no-one but criminals and country landowners owned guns, and it was as if it had all been a dream. A bit of her life locked away inside, like so many other things from that year, once she was back into the groove of Dr Hooper, pathologist and conformist.

***

John's pistol's a Sig, bigger and heavier than the little Glock 19 she used to carry, but it still feels right in her hands, John's hands. He shoots right-handed, she knows that somehow, as she moves the gun between her fingers. Which is unexpected, but convenient, means she doesn't have to alter her stance. If she could only have a few sessions down at a handy firing range, her mind and John's body would mesh together seamlessly, and she'd be ready to take on the world.

With a handgun that neither of them is supposed to possess. Still, it does at least mean that Dr Watson's probably going to be cautious about running off to the authorities for help with reclaiming his possessions. He's not quite the upright citizen he pretends to be either, is he? So what else might he be hiding? She opens up the laptop and switches it on. Here's hoping he hasn't bothered with password protection either.

Sure enough, she gets into John's e-mail account easily, and the impersonation rapidly becomes the kind of prepping for an exam that she's always been good at. Harry Watson turns out to be John's 'ever-loving sis', not his brother or father, though judging from some of the comments in John's replies, he's not that positive towards her: thinks she drinks too much and is being horrible to her civil partner. There are occasional e-mails to friends in the UK, but no mention of his parents: dead, presumably. No sign of any girlfriend, either, which is helpful.

A quick check through his browser history brings up his blog. It's uninformative about his activities, but confirms her impression of a man who's unhappy and inarticulate. Well, you don't have to say much when Sherlock's around. Indeed the less she says, the longer it'll take him to spot her. It's only if she starts to gush, talk too much, that he'll work out who she is.

She practises saying: "I am an experienced medical doctor recently returned from Afghanistan" until it sounds right. Does it really matter that she's not an army doctor, now she's left the army? She is an experienced medical doctor, after all. And if anyone asks her about Afghanistan, she can always say she'd rather not talk about it. In fact, she realises, male reticence is wonderful. She can refuse to talk about almost anything, from John Watson's heroism to his sexual conquests. She may need to discuss sport, but judging by his bookmarks, he seems to be into rugby rather than football. She's picked up just enough from Tim, the boyfriend before last, to tell a ruck from a scrum, so she can probably get away with that.

Right, she can probably sound like Dr Watson, at least to someone who doesn't know him well. But can she look like him? She wipes the mirror clean in the frankly squalid bathroom down the hall and starts practising expressions. It's not a handsome face, but it's surprisingly pleasant when it smiles, and also good at looking stoical. She practises looking stoical quite a lot, because she's an ex-army doctor with a psychosomatic limp, and stoical goes well with that.

She suspects her body language is all wrong – she has read books about the differences between men and women, but when she tries to swagger it looks and feels wrong, awkward and uncomfortable. She can't really remember John's gestures – she was mostly thinking about Sherlock, as usual. But she vaguely thinks he stood quite upright, in a military sort of way, apart from when he was walking and leaning on the cane. There's a spare cane in the flat, thank goodness, and if she uses that, and remembers to limp, and keeps her other hand in her pocket, than there's automatically a tension in her – his – body that goes with a stoical smile and don't-mention-the-war reticence. And it's easier to remember to sit with legs spread out when there's something vulnerable between them...

Just how vulnerable she finds out accidentally, when she does a slightly overenthusiastic limp, which gets her leg cramping and rams her painfully into the edge of the desk. She's never again going to laugh at someone being kneed in the groin. But when she checks, there doesn't appear to be any serious damage done. All the hydraulics seem to work automatically, and though Dr Watson's penis is unremarkable when flaccid, it does respond surprisingly positively to a bit of manipulation, grows well. This, she decides, is worth exploring a bit more.

She ends up sitting at the desk, looking at some photos on John's laptop, and giving herself – she has to force herself to use the word – a wank. Other than the angle being different, the technique is similar to when she's given handjobs before. It's just that she enjoys it this time, even if she's forgotten how messy everything gets with men. Next time, she'll have to have a towel handy. And she probably also needs to clear the browser history, so no-one can spot that John Watson has been spending too much time looking at pictures of Sherlock Holmes.

That's a point, though, isn't it? Dr Watson might well look up Sherlock Holmes. Not the sites _she_ knows about – with the photos – but he might well find _The Science of Deduction_. She brings that up and is as usual disappointed by its lack of material. She longs for more case reports or even sarky remarks on the forum. She'd take anything that told her more about Sherlock; she needs to know as much as she can about him for this thing to work.

***

In the morning, she's trying to decide the best way to deal with the erection she's woken up to: aren't men's bodies both weird and strangely enthralling? Then an alarming – indeed, deflating – thought occurs to her. She's supposed to be meeting Sherlock to look at a flat this evening, but she has no idea where or when. She looks hurriedly at John's phone, even sees if he scribbled it down in the old diary, but nothing. What on earth does she do?

She could just phone Sherlock up or e-mail him and say...and say what? He's going to think Dr Watson's a complete idiot if he can't remember that, might well decide at once he wants nothing more to do with him. Is there any other way she can find the information out? Her mind skims through ridiculous plans – phoning up every estate agent in London, is there CCTV footage of their meeting yesterday? – and she's near panic. And then it finally occurs to her. When Sherlock and John were together in the lab, Mike Stamford was there as well, wasn't he? He'll be sure to remember; Mike remembers things like that. He's the one who always gets her birthday _and_ the names of her parents right.

But Mike's not answering his office phone and his mobile is turned off. She leaves messages and e-mails in all the places she can think of, and then goes back to more practising being John Watson. She starts reading his e-mails out loud, even his text messages, till she feels she's beginning to sound like him, getting a trace of his laconic humour in her speech. And there are some photos and even a couple of video clips of him on his hard drive, which she studies intently.

What else does she need to prepare? She finds a video on YouTube that shows her how to field strip and clean the Sig, which gives her a chance to practise with the gun and being left-handed. She also starts to practise John's signature, though the result is a very crude approximation. If Sherlock sees anything she's written, she's done for. But it's probably all irrelevant anyhow, she starts to think, as the hours race on. She still hasn't heard back from Mike, and she's beginning to think she will have to phone Sherlock and make a desperate attempt to bluff him and get the details of the meeting. Then, just after lunch, Mike phones her.

"I'm very sorry I didn't get back to you earlier, when you said it was urgent," he says apologetically, "but it's been a terrible morning."

"What's up?" she asks.

"You met Molly Hooper, didn't you, yesterday? The pathologist from the morgue, a pretty woman with long tawny hair? She took you off for a coffee, I think."

"Yes," she says cautiously, "I remember her."

"She had an accident yesterday afternoon with some electrical equipment."

So they had found her – him. "What happened?" she demanded. "Is she OK?"

"They're not quite sure what happened, whether she electrocuted herself or what, but it might be quite serious. No sign of thermal burns or muscle damage, but they're worried about nervous system effects. She's over at the trauma centre in the Royal London in a coma. I've been there all morning, but there's no change so far."

"God, that's awful. Poor woman."

"Yeah. I've been trying to get hold of her family, they should be over later today. But anyhow, you said you needed to ask me something?"

"Bit embarrassing," she says. "I'm supposed to be meeting Sherlock Holmes this evening, but I can't remember any of the details. My mind must be going, Mike."

"Old age getting to you, as well, is it, John? Let me think. It was 7 p. m., and the address was...221 Baker Street."

"How can you remember that? It's amazing."

"Oh, I always tend to remember what Sherlock says. Partly so I can point it out when he does get things wrong. What was all that about your brother? You don't have one, do you?"

"I've no idea what that was. But thanks for the info, Mike. Take care." She rings off hastily, before she says the wrong thing, betrays herself. Mike's such a sweet man, isn't he? Typical that he's been the one at her...at Molly's bedside, worrying about her. She looks at her watch. Five hours to go then, before she meets Sherlock. And probably five hours and thirty seconds before he spots her as a fake.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Molly's taken John's body without its owner's consent, but what is Sherlock going to say when she arrives at 221B?

Molly's wrong about how long it will take Sherlock to spot her, or rather Sherlock's wrong about her. Sherlock wants an audience, she realises when she gets to Baker Street, and he's pleased to have John Watson as part of it. And Mrs Hudson is obviously enthusiastic about a wounded war hero as well, even if she does seem to think John is Sherlock's boyfriend. Molly hastily says they'll be needing two bedrooms and wonders if her body language is somehow giving her away. She sits down, and Sherlock promptly attempts to impress a rather unimpressed John Watson. She barely has to say anything to get him going, and then a plain clothes policeman rushes in and begs Sherlock for help with the serial suicides. It's wonderful: she's suddenly inside the news.

Sherlock disappears off, and she starts to make herself comfortable in the flat, wondering when he'll be back, what he'll let slip to her about the case. Then she remembers that she's supposed to be a man of action and swears at her leg when Mrs Hudson gives her an opportunity. Mrs Hudson still offers to make her a cup of tea, though; that's what women do for men, isn't it? She's starting to get the hang of this.

But now Sherlock is back, bounding up the stairs again, standing in the doorway looking gorgeous, as ever, and she knows her time's up, that he's spotted her trick.

"You're a doctor," he says, and she opens her mouth to say, yes, she's Molly Hooper, because he obviously hasn't deduced that bit yet. And then Sherlock adds: "In fact, you're an army doctor," and she realises that she's still fooling him. So she hauls herself up from the chair, and tries to look and sound military, like the tough but weary ex-soldier that John Watson is. Until Sherlock asks her whether she'd like to see some trouble, and, without thinking, she responds enthusiastically.

And suddenly she's hurrying after Sherlock, trying to remember to limp, and then sitting in a taxi with him going off to see a dead body. Well, at least she knows plenty about those, she thinks as she stares out of the cab window. She has no idea what Dr Watson would do in this situation, but it doesn't seem to matter, because Sherlock's soon showing off again, and enthusiastically accepting her admiration at his brilliance. Why does he like compliments from _him_ , when he hated them from me, she wonders, but it doesn't really matter. What matters is that she's with Sherlock and as long as she does what he tells her– with an occasional rather sceptical comment, because John Watson is not a complete pushover – he accepts her as his assistant.

So it's all amazing, until Sherlock abruptly runs out on her. Well, strictly speaking, on John Watson, because presumably even Sherlock would think twice before leaving a woman to walk through Brixton on her own at night. But she looks like she can take care of herself, so she trudges off towards the High Street.  It'd be easier, of course, if she could drop the limp, but she has to stay in character, she decides, even if her leg muscles are starting to protest terribly.

When she realises that the payphones are starting ringing as she goes past, she answers one, because maybe Sherlock's testing her. But instead, it's an unfamiliar posh voice that starts telling her about CCTV cameras and orders her to get into a car. She's tempted to retort that her mother told her never to get into strange men's cars, but then she realises that it must be some kind of special police doing this. How else to explain the control of the cameras and the voice's air of authority? And the Body Swap Investigation Unit, or whoever they are, probably don't like jokes, or people resisting arrest. She'll end up in even more trouble if she tries either.

On the other hand, once she gets in the car, the tall, glamorous brunette in the back of it, who is obviously there as a chaperone for Molly Hooper, suggests that they won't necessarily be too scary. She should try and get her on her side, Molly thinks. So John Watson asks the woman who she is, gets an evasive answer, and then adds automatically: "I'm John". The woman going by the name of Anthea smiles without looking at her, and says:  "Yes, I know", and it abruptly dawns on Molly: they don't know about the body swap, after all. They – whoever they are – think she really is John Watson. She has just let herself be kidnapped.

She's near panic, but would John Watson panic? No. He's been in Afghanistan, for goodness’ sake, under fire. And she remembers his stillness, coolness even, in the canteen when she told him about a possible torture chamber. She has to try and copy that composure, keep her voice calm as she asks a pointless question about where they're going. Think herself back into Dr Watson, not worry about what might be coming.

She's managing OK till the car swings into some kind of deserted factory or warehouse and comes to a stop. She can't see what's out there very clearly, but it's far scarier than being brought to an office or a house. This is a place you get taken to when you're going to be killed, she realises. She is about to die.

 _Please God, let me live_ , she thinks, almost prays, as she stumbles out of the car, clutching the cane. She wants to run, but there's nowhere to run to. And her one chance of escaping is catching them by surprise, them not realising that her limp is fake. So she takes one stiff step towards the silhouette of the tall man in the warehouse. He stays standing there, leaning on...it's an umbrella, isn't it? And she suddenly _recognises_ him: it's Sherlock's brother. Who is someone very important in some obscure kind of way, because he's got Sherlock out of trouble at Barts on several occasions.

But he doesn't know that she's Molly, and John Watson doesn't know who Sherlock's brother is. So it's time for Dr Watson to be calm and unimpressed again, and it's strange how natural that quiet stoicism is starting to become. She even manages to tell Mr Holmes that he doesn't seem very frightening, and he promptly calls her brave. No-one ever thinks Molly is brave, but she is now that she's John, coolly answering her phone in the middle of a conversation with Sherlock's "archenemy". It's Sherlock who's texted, wanting her to come back to Baker Street.

Sherlock wants her, and nothing on this earth is going to stop her, certainly not his brother's posturing. She doesn't even flinch when Mr Holmes rather creepily takes her hand, and she smiles inwardly when he remarks about it not shaking.  The tremor was psychosomatic as well, wasn't it, another demon lurking in John Watson's battered mind? But his body loves danger, and she's got that now. Mr Holmes is right about the battlefield: she's ready for it. On her way to Baker Street, she's so confident that she stops off at the flat to pick up John's gun and even tries some (completely unsuccessful) flirting with Anthea.

***

Back at 221B, Sherlock is being his usual mesmerising and infuriating self, and John Watson does his bidding, just like Molly Hooper normally does. Well, not just like Molly Hooper, because John is allowed to protest more and gets told rather more by Sherlock than Molly ever would. And he gets a reward as well, invited by Sherlock to come and meet a murderer. John Watson –  Molly – is Sherlock's colleague now.

She remembers to object that it's not a date when Sherlock takes her into the restaurant for the stake-out, but she slips up after that, starts a silly conversation about whether Sherlock has a girlfriend or boyfriend. It's something she's always wanted to know, but it makes John sound as if he's coming onto Sherlock, the kind of girly behaviour that might betray her. Fortunately, Sherlock gets distracted by the taxi, and runs off. She runs after him, because she's not getting left behind again.

John's body is fitter than hers, but she's still in agony very quickly, heart pounding, legs aching; she's not used to running, let alone jumping across roofs. But Sherlock calls to her to come on, and at the thought that he's remembered about her, noticed her, she realises she will follow him anywhere, do anything. She races on, through a blur of streets, and somehow, ridiculously, they catch the cab, and it's the wrong person, but it's still _wonderful_.  They head home giggling – should John Watson be giggling, she wonders, but it doesn't seem to matter now – and collapse in near hysterics inside the hall in Baker Street. And then Angelo turns up with John's stick and she realises that Sherlock thinks he's cured a limp she didn't have in the first place.

Or maybe one she did have. She's less and less sure that she and John are completely separate any more; she is becoming him, absorbing him. During the drugs bust, when Sherlock looks at her uncertainly after one of his more tactless remarks, and asks: "Not good?", "Bit not good, yeah," comes immediately to her lips – his lips. And then Sherlock ignores everyone else in the room and demands what she'd say if she was dying. She replies: "Please God, let me live", and it's as if she's fusing together the past soldier and herself, the eager recruit to the battlefield. She's seen death, she's expected to die; she and John Watson both know what they're talking about.

So when Sherlock disappears off on his own yet again – what is it with that man? – she doesn't worry about why he's done that, like Lestrade does. What matters to John is where Sherlock's gone and how he can find him. It's only when she gets to the FE college that she starts to feel alarmed. She may look like John Watson, but she's not him, doesn't know how to fight, how to use the muscles she knows are hiding under his woolly jumper.  Still, she has got a gun; if she can just find Sherlock, she can protect him from the serial killer he's almost certainly gone off to meet. She begins a rapid search through the first of the buildings. Where is Sherlock lurking in this jumble of classrooms?

She can't find him, and she can feel John's worried body surging with adrenaline, as she runs down the corridors. Has she somehow missed him? But he has to be here, he has to be.  Through another set of doors, and then she sees him: framed in the window of another building, talking to another man. A small, insignificant man who must be the serial killer, just about to talk Sherlock into taking a poisoned pill. She yells to Sherlock, but she knows it's too late. This whole thing is going to end almost before it began. Sherlock is going to take the poison and she can't get to him in time to save him.

And then she realises she _can_ save him. Because she's got John Watson's pistol with her and John Watson's strong, steady hand and keen eye. And as she carefully raises the gun she _knows_ that this is why all of this has happened, that it's meant to happen. She has had her body swapped in order to save Sherlock, and there is nothing to fear. It is an impossible shot but nothing is impossible for her now. She feels nothing when the bullet hits the cabbie, as it was bound to do. It is not her doing this...

So it's easy to run away afterwards and play innocent, fool Sergeant Donovan that she'd never been there. She can't fool Sherlock, of course; he looks across at her from the ambulance, and she looks away awkwardly, knowing he knows everything now. When he goes over to her, she's going to confirm that it's her; she's trying to work out what to say, even as she mutters stupid things about it being a dreadful business. And then Sherlock looks at her and asks: "Are you all right?"

"Yes, of course I'm all right," comes out automatically from her mouth, and in that second she sees it all fit together, snap into place. Sherlock still thinks she's John, and he cares about how John is feeling – he's never cared if Molly's all right, not in all the time he's known her. Sherlock cares for John Watson, and she is not prepared to lose that. Not without a fight. She's John Watson and she's staying John Watson.

So the next question is, what would Watson do? Which is obviously what anyone who's used to death – a soldier, a doctor – would do in a situation like this. Make a joke in bad taste.

She smiles and says something ridiculous about the killer being a hopeless cabbie, and it works, the way everything works tonight. Suddenly she and Sherlock are guys together again – laughing, giggling – and it's as easy as that. She follows after Sherlock – even as a man, she's still frustratingly shorter than him – and then it somehow seems inevitable that John Watson calls Sherlock an idiot. Because he is, and even if Molly would never tell him that, John would. John Watson calls Sherlock an idiot and promptly gets offered dinner. She knows even then that it's the start of a beautiful friendship.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John has a horrible surprise...

The first time John wakes up he's in a hospital room and someone blurry with a voice he feels he ought to remember is bending over and saying soothingly: "It's OK, you're safe, don't worry." He sinks back into oblivion reassured. The next time he surfaces, Mike Stamford's there, saying: "Do you want to try and stay with us this time, Molly?" and he can't understand it. Why is Mike in Afghanistan and what's he talking about? And why does his body feel so wrong, not hurting precisely, but as if he's put his skin on back to front? Deal with that first, he decides.

"Water," he croaks, and it doesn’t sound like his voice, but Mike gives him a glass and he gulps it down.

"Steady," Mike says, "You've been out for nearly a day, take things slowly." That makes no sense, but he can worry about that later, and who all the concerned strangers are looking down at him. One thing at a time. His body first. Limbs all vaguely attached, water drunk, next step is check the rest of the internal systems. His bladder feels full, for a start.

"Toilet," he says, in a voice which still doesn't sound right, but Mike's helping him up, so he can't be that badly damaged, not attached to anything. He's back in London, he knows that somehow, even if he doesn't know how he knows, but why isn't he in a military hospital? And how can he have been out for 24 hours? Because if a blast has done that to him, surely he should be full of shrapnel? Something's badly wrong, but he can't work out what, so he concentrates slightly dizzily on walking into the bathroom, putting one foot in front of another.  And then he sees Molly Hooper's face in the mirror, and it's the shock of losing, not just where and when he is, but _who_ he is that starts him screaming.

***

When John looks back at that moment, he knows that his panic wrecked his chances. If he hadn't started screaming, had held his nerve amid the disorientation, things might have been different. But all he can think at that moment is 'captured by the enemy and brainwashed', and that he has to escape. He panics, and he runs, and they catch him, because Molly can't run fast enough, and then John's brain gives the order to fight, only to find that Molly's body lacks the crucial size and expertise. He supposes what happens next is inevitable. An agitated person, an agitated _woman_ , claiming she is a man called John Watson and displaying violent tendencies is always likely to end up in a locked psychiatric ward pumped full of antipsychotic drugs.

He can't remember the next week clearly. Yelling and swearing and fighting and not being sure if he's hallucinating or not: the drugs confuse him, and his nightmares are mixing together Afghanistan and London further in his scrambled brain. He's vaguely aware that he's been transferred to a different unit; probably a private clinic, judging by the extra staff and the tasteful decor of his sparsely furnished room. He tries to escape several times again, in between his encounters with the psychiatrists. When he sees them, he attempts desperately to sound rational, but how do you rationally try and explain that you've been accidentally electrocuted by a mad scientist's machine and as a result had your body swapped with a pathologist? There's a different diagnosis almost every day, though the most common seems to be schizophreniform disorder.

***

And then he wakes up sweating from a nightmare in which Molly and he are Taliban fighters who've just been captured by Sherlock, to find Mike Stamford at his bedside again. Other people have come to see him, people he didn't recognise, who called him Molly and were distraught at him insisting he was John Watson. But now Mike's here and maybe _he_ will believe him. Only he can't think straight with all the pills he's had.

"They're drugging me, Mike," he says in _her_ voice. No, that isn't what he has to say, he has to sound sane. "I'm on antipsychotics. Olanzapine, I think they said."

"I'm going to ask them to cut the dose down," Mike says, "but you have to co-operate."

"How?"

"Don't try and escape, don't fight. I'll ask them to give you a lower dose tonight, and then I'll come back tomorrow morning and we can talk. At least you recognise me, which is a start, Molly."

"Don't call me Molly!" he yells. "I'm not Molly, I'm John!"

"Tomorrow," Mike says soothingly. "Tomorrow we'll work this out."

***

The lower dosage means he doesn't feel quite so wiped out, and he decides he needs to clean himself before Mike comes. Clean _her_ up. It's not a bad body, he finds himself thinking: he, she, Molly, is an attractive woman, if a little thin. Not old and battered and scarred like the real him. He has a shower and washes her hair: inconveniently long, but at least he doesn't have to shave, and he looks quite presentable, apart from the hospital gown.

He can see the better impression he makes on Mike, when he arrives, the subtle relaxing that says: _Not as bad as I expected_.

"OK," Mike says, "The first thing I've been asked to do, Molly–"

"Don't call me that!" he yells, his nails – her nails, longer than his, still with a few traces of nail varnish – digging into his, her palms. "I'm John Watson!" He's lost everything but that. If he loses that, there's no more of him.

"I have a friend called John Watson," Mike says gently. "He's currently running around London after Sherlock Holmes. I _want_ to help you, M-my friend, but I find it very difficult calling you that. Is there some other name I can use?"

"Call me J," he says at last.

"OK, Jay. First, let me make it clear I'm not here officially, just helping out a friend." Mike's voice has taken on the reassuring warmth he probably keeps for his more sensitive students. "Before we talk about what's happened to you, is it OK if I check your thought processes more generally?"

"You mean have I got signs of mental impairment?" John says, after a moment's consideration. "You think my supposed delusions may be the result of brain damage?"

"You were found amid the wreckage of half a lab's worth of equipment," Mike says, smiling. "I don't know what you were trying to do to yourself, but let's make sure you haven't managed to do it. So start with the really obvious question. Who's the current Prime Minister?"

***

"OK," Mike says, after about half an hour of conversation, "you're not showing obvious signs of cognitive impairment, well at least not that a rank amateur like me can spot."

"You asked me pathology questions that I didn't know the answer to," John replies triumphantly. "Whereas John Watson would get the ordinary medical questions right, but not those."

"You're on drugs, you're under stress; odd gaps in your memory aren't surprising. Or various...other effects."

"Mike, what have they been telling you about what happened to me?"

"Nothing officially, of course," Mike says, looking at him very shrewdly, and then adds quietly. "But anyhow, what would be better, Jay, is if you tell me what _you_ think happened to you."

***

It's hard to get the words in focus, to explain, he finds he's tripping over the story, missing out things and having to go back. But Mike just sits there placidly and listens, a sympathetic smile across his broad face. It's only when John's finished that Mike says:

"Let me get this straight. You went with Molly Hooper to examine a mind-altering machine that Sherlock had secretly built in the basement of Barts. You attempted to operate the machine, it went wrong and your body, or possibly your mind, got swapped with Molly's. Is that what you think happened, Jay?"

"Yes!" he shouts, because someone's finally got it, and then he registers the pained, sympathetic expression in Mike's grey eyes. "You don't believe me, do you?"

"I can't believe you, Jay. You know I can't."

"Because it's not scientifically possible? You can't accept the existence of unknown phenomena?"

"Leave that on one side for a moment," Mike says, and he sounds as if he's trying to help a particularly dim anatomy student. "If your story is correct, then two other people are involved: Sherlock Holmes and John Watson."

"Yes."

"I talked to them, a couple of days ago, to see if they could shed any light on your...beliefs. Both of them had left Barts, weren't around when you had your accident. And Sherlock denies all knowledge of the equipment that was found."

"No!" he screams, anger surging up, and his hands reach out to grab Mike's shoulders, to shake some sense into him. And then he sees the look of fear on Mike's face. Mike isn't running, he's just frozen there, knowing that John – Molly – is going to hurt him, unable or unwilling to fight back.

He whirls round, because he can't, he mustn't hurt Mike, but the pain inside is overwhelming, unendurable.  He wants something to break, to smash, but there is almost nothing in the room, and if he does – if he starts to pound his head against the wall, smash his fists into the furniture – _they_ will hear, they will come in and hold him down, sedate him or put him into restraints. He flings himself down on his bed, but he mustn't curl up in a ball, or he'll end up clawing at himself, his arms, her face. Instead he stretches out, bracing his hands on either side of the headboard so that he _can't_ use them, forcing his shuddering body face down into the mattress. He can survive this. For a few moments there is nothing but the effort of enduring, of not letting himself be washed away by the tide. And then he hears Mike kneeling down clumsily by the bed.

"Jay," Mike's voice is very near, very quiet. "Hang on in there. I know it's bad, but you can get through this. Just keep breathing."

And abruptly John's crying. Not nice gentle tears, but howling, shaking, snotty misery, that he can't seem to stop, that consumes him. He just lies there on the bed and cries endlessly, and at some point Mike comes and sits on the edge of the bed beside him, and offers him tissues, and he curls up around Mike's bulk and cries some more. Maybe Molly's body's built for crying, he thinks vaguely. Or maybe it's just because there's no point in holding the tears in any more.

"Did that help?" Mike says eventually, when he finally stops, all cried out, at least for the moment.

"No," he says, though at least he's too exhausted to be angry now. He finds his right hand, Molly's hand, is wrapped round Mike's large, soft palm. He's not entirely certain how it got there, but it's surprisingly soothing. He wriggles onto his back, thinking he might just close his eyes for a minute.

***

He wakes up alone on the bed, and for a moment he panics, and then he realises that Mike is sitting in a chair beside his bed, reading his way calmly through a pile of old copies of the _Lancet_.

"Am I still in the loony bin?" John demands, and then realises he's not supposed to say that.

"You're still in the clinic, Jay," Mike replies, as pleasantly as if he enjoys spending his time sitting at a madman's bedside. "But I'm going to do everything possible to get you out."

"If you can get me into the grounds, there's a place I think I can get over the walls."

"Jay," Mike says very softly. "I meant discharged, not escaping."

"But how do I make them believe me?" John asks, and then his mind clears slightly, even though it's still working at half its normal speed. "You know that if Sherlock had built something dodgy at Barts, he'd hardly admit it."

"That's probably true," Mike replies, smiling. "And I'm sure you can come up with some plausible reason as to why Dr Watson is denying things happened as you say."

"So what Molly's...Dr Watson's story?"

"That you...that Molly took him for a coffee and then claimed that Sherlock was playing at being Frankenstein in the morgue. John was frankly alarmed at her manner, refused to go with her and headed off home instead. And that was the last he knew about it, till I told him about the accident."

"And what do you think happened?"

Mike looked deeply unhappy. "I don't know what to believe. There is your version, which is frankly impossible. And there's the psychiatrists' explanation, which is improbable. But, as a friend of mine once said, once you've eliminated the impossible, you're just left with the improbable."

"What's the improbable explanation?" John asks.

"That Dr Molly Hooper is an intelligent, attractive, competent young pathologist who was...extremely attracted to Sherlock Holmes. Possibly too attracted, even a bit obsessive about him. She tried to build some kind of gadget to impress him, show she was a genius as well. In a location to which only she had easy access."

"But that doesn't explain–"

"Wait, hear me out. Molly Hooper, the suggestion is, suffered some kind of acute psychotic episode, triggered by meeting John Watson. Molly loved Sherlock, would do anything for him, but he simply ignored her, exploited her. Yet he invited Dr Watson, whom he'd never met before, to be his flatmate. In some bizarre way, John, to Molly, became her rival. After he'd left, she went down to her equipment, and, well, then the suggestions vary. She was trying to experiment on herself, or she was trying to destroy the equipment, or she was trying to kill herself. Whatever happened, there was some kind of accident, and her brain tried to cope with it in the only way it could. Sherlock wanted John Watson, not Molly Hooper. Therefore Molly Hooper became John Watson, believed she was him."

"But that doesn't make sense!"

"I know, but nor does what you say."

"But how could I know so much about John Watson if I'm really Molly Hooper?"

"Jay," Mike says slowly. "Do you remember learning about delusional disorders back in medical school?"

"Not that much. That the patient appears rational apart from matters relating to the delusion–"

"And that they can provide superficially logical explanations for any inconsistencies in their argument. Jay, whatever you say, they won't believe you."

"But they have to, if I know enough things about John Watson that no-one else could know."

"No," Mike says, shaking his head sadly. "You've been diagnosed, they're not going to undiagnose you. They're not going to listen as long as you keep saying the same thing."

"No!" John insists. "I'll make them see the truth. Don't worry, Mike, I know how to do it."

***

He spends much of the next day writing down details of his – John's – past; he barely speaks to Mike during his visit. But his psychiatrist won't read it, or at least won't take it seriously.

"Read it properly," he demands. "Check the details. Ask yourself how Molly could know all that information."

"I will look it at, Jay," Dr Dravid replies, calm and patient, and John knows he doesn't mean it. And then he realises that he's written too much. Made himself look obsessive, hasn't he? Black mark there.

"I'll prove to you I'm John Watson," he says at his next session. "He had a therapist, her name's Ella Thompson. Get her here, please, and let _her_ talk to me."

***

He's so excited that they agree that he doesn't worry about the fact that Mike hasn't turned up for a visit for two – or is it three? – days. Ella will know who he is, and he'll get himself out of here and go off to Barts and give Mike a surprise.

He's forgotten one thing, of course. That Ella has read all the mental health textbooks as well. That Ella _knows_ that the woman sat in front of her is Dr Molly Hooper, who is delusional. And that she’s distinctly alarmed about someone pretending to be John Watson.

"I think you should know, Molly – no, you prefer Jay, don't you? – that Dr Watson has ceased his sessions with me, so I'm no longer his therapist."

"Well of course Molly's stopped them," he protests, "otherwise you might spot that she wasn't me. And how can I know about the sessions if I'm not Molly?"

"A couple of weeks ago," Ella says, with infinite patience, "there was break-in at my clinic. I think it's possible that someone got  
access to John Watson's files then."

"What day was it?"

"Does that matter?"

"Tell me, please."

Ella looks in her diary and says: "The break-in was discovered on the morning of 30th January, but it might have taken place the previous night."

"When _I_ , I mean Molly was already unconscious in this hospital," John says triumphantly, "so I can't have seen your notes. I know what John told you about Afghanistan because I am John."

"John told me almost nothing about his wartime experiences," Ella says, slowly, heavily. "I tried to get through to him, but all I got was resistance, to be honest. It's not unknown as a coping mechanism. John Watson was, is, an extremely reserved man, has severe difficulty in expressing his emotions. You, in contrast, seem emotionally volatile, very agitated and desperate to talk."

"Of course I'm agitated," John protests. "No-one believes me, and I've been sectioned. But I can tell you exactly what we talked about. You wanted me to write a blog, which I've done, we've been discussing my leg and the possibility of the pain being psychosomatic–"

"What limp?" says Ella quietly. "That's one aspect of John Watson's life that you don't seem to have mimicked, which is surprising. Does it perhaps suggest a certain ambivalence towards John as war hero? That you want the glory of being an ex-soldier, but not the pain that might be associated with it, Jay?"

***

He can't remember what he said after that. It doesn't matter what he said. If he can't understand himself what's happening, why Molly's leg doesn't feel the pain, what odd interface between body and mind has shifted, how can he possibly explain it to anyone else? Besides, Ella wouldn't have listened. No-one will ever listen to him. He spends the next few days – two, three, more? – in bed, too weary to move. It's over. This tasteful, blank room, this pretty, helpless body are it for the rest of his life. And he's alone; even Mike Stamford has given up on him. End of the line.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John's attempts to get himself proved sane take an unexpected turm.

John is collapsed hopelessly in bed on the day – whatever day it is – that Mike comes back to the clinic. Fat, funny old Mike, who looks particularly middle-aged and worn today, but is still the most beautiful sight John has ever seen. He doesn't stop to think before he's hugging Mike, Molly's head resting on his shoulder. Mike is warm and solid and real, the one real thing in the midst of all this mess. He knows he's near tears again.

"Jay," Mike says, hugging him – her – back. "It's OK, Jay. I'm not going anywhere. Just relax, it's OK."

It takes a while to calm himself down, he hadn't realised how much he missed Mike. But Mike just talks gently about the weather and the Underground and the state of his garden and all the things people talk about to avoid painful topics, and John finds himself starting to become coherent again, able to respond, to think.

"It didn't work," John says at last. "I tried to prove to them I was John Watson and they didn't believe me. You were right all along, Mike." A thought suddenly strikes him. "Did you stay away because you were annoyed at me for not listening to you?"

"Of course not, Jay," Mike says. He's slumping in the room's armchair the way he always does, an over-stuffed teddy-bear of a man, and it’s right that he's there; the room seems bare without him now.

"Then why didn't you come?" It sounds pathetic, he knows; Mike has a life of his own, after all. In fact...

"I'm sorry," he says. "I've been expecting you to drop everything and come here, but it's term-time, isn't it? You must be frantically busy."

"I'm on unpaid leave at the moment," Mike says, with a rueful smile. "Twisted arms at Barts a bit and got the term off. So don't worry about that."

"Why would you do that?"

"Because you need help, and I seem to be your best chance of getting it. I'm sorry I had to miss the last few days, but it's all sorted out now." There's a tiny constraint in Mike's normal cheery manner that jars on John. He's hiding something, isn't he? Mike's the only person he can trust and now _he's_ hiding things from him.

"What happened?" he asks.

"It's nothing."

"Tell me, please!" Mike shakes his head, and then John's slow brain finally catches up. Home problems. Mike hasn't said anything about his family, but he knows he's married. He has a sudden memory of seeing it in the alumni magazine a few years ago. Remembers thinking: _good old Mike, finally got a girl_. She'd been a doctor as well, hadn't she? Or is he getting Mike confused with one of his other medical school friends? His brain is still so foggy from the drugs.

The point is that Mike is spending all his time trying to sort out some crazy ex-army friend from way back. Even taking unpaid time off work. It's not surprising his wife – does he have children as well, why does he know so little about Mike? – is cutting up rough.

"I'm sorry," he says, "I'm _so_ sorry. It's my fault, isn't it? You're in trouble because of me." He can hear the pain in Molly's voice, feel the tension rise in his body.

"Don't blame yourself. You had no way of knowing, Jay," Mike says. "But yes. I've spent the past few days being questioned. First by Barts and then by the police."

"What?" His brain has obviously ceased to function completely. He finds himself looking down at his hands, to check that he hasn't turned into somebody else again.

"Suspicion of identity theft," Mike replies. "You gave the psychiatrists information that Molly Hooper shouldn't have known, couldn't have known."

"And?"

"So they needed an answer as to how you came to know so much about Dr John Watson. An answer that made more sense than that you are him. So they started from the person in London who knew most about John."

"Harry?"

"Yes."

"But Molly's never met Harry, has she?"

"No, but there's a link between them. I'm a friend of Molly's and I used to know Harry."

"But you haven't seen her for years."

"I know, but how do I prove that? As far as I could work it out, the police's theory is as follows. Harry, Molly and I somehow devised a plan to steal John Watson's identity, presumably to get hold of his money. We shared information about him. Harry told me where I was likely to find him, and then I lured him to Barts."

"Why there?"

"So that Molly could put the frighteners on him. The contraption in the basement was going to be used on him in some way: torture him or brainwash him. Or possibly to replicate his iris and fingerprints. I know," Mike says wearily, "it made no sense, and the police eventually realised that. But Barts are still in a state of complete panic about what happened, and they were quite happy for a while to run with an explanation that you getting hurt wasn't anything to do with their negligence, but criminal acts by others."

"But if they looked at the equipment, they'd see it couldn't be for a torture chamber. I mean, I know it's damaged but–" He breaks off, because Mike's face has gone very blank, deliberately so.

"What did they do?" John asks.

"Panicked, as I said. It's all gone, Jay, all Sherlock's stuff. They were so horrified that someone could build _something_ down there, whatever it was, that nearly killed someone. So it all got removed, disposed of. I've got hold of a couple of photos that someone took at the scene and a few vague descriptions, but that's all. I did try and check your story, Jay, but it can't be done."

"I could describe the equipment."

"I'm sure you could, Jay, but what you insist happened does not make sense, and unless you can make it make sense, no-one’s going to pay attention."

"You know I don't know how it worked; it shouldn't have worked," John says, and then a thought strikes him. "You said Sherlock's equipment, didn't you? You think he's involved. You believe me."

"I believe that Sherlock was involved, somehow," Mike says slowly, "You, I mean Molly, just would not have built something like that. She wasn't that sort of a woman."

"What kind of woman was she?" John demands. He's almost forgotten about Molly Hooper's mind, even though he now knows her body so intimately.

"I...can we not talk about her right now?" Mike says. "I think...we've both had a rough few days. Suppose we just go to the lounge and watch some of the sports channel for a bit?"

***

"You think I'm John, don't you?" John says when Mike comes in the next morning. "If you thought I was Molly, you wouldn't suggest going and watching sports programmes, would you?"

Mike just sits there awkwardly, and eventually says: "I don't know who you are. I...I had two friends once, John and Molly. John and I, we were good friends at uni, best mates, you might even say. But he went off to be in the army and we lost touch."

"I'm sorry," John says. He'd been so busy, it had just not been possible...no, he mustn't fool himself. Civilian life had seemed so mundane and boring, and Mike had been the most civilian of civilians, clinging tightly onto Barts. It had seemed easier to leave him behind, along with so much else.

"Anyhow," Mike says, "I met John again and he said himself he wasn't the same man any more. And yes, maybe he has changed, but it's nearly fifteen years, people change in their heads as well as getting fat. The John Watson I see with Sherlock is brave, intelligent, loyal, caring." He paused. "But then so is, so was Molly."

"Tell me about her."

"It's hard to explain about Molly," Mike says slowly. "She seems quite ordinary in many ways, and yet she's not. She's...different."

There's something in his tone that abruptly rings very old bells in John's head. He's heard Mike talk about women like that before.

"You were in love with her, weren't you?" he blurts out, and even as he winces at his tactlessness, he can see the blush spreading on Mike's face, as he stands up and goes to stare out of the window, as if there's something exciting happening in the bare garden below.

 _Poor Mike_ , John thinks. He can just imagine it suddenly. Molly trailing after Sherlock, oblivious to everyone but him. And Mike, married to – Miriam, Marguerite, he's almost sure now it's one of those – watching a beautiful young woman making a mess of her life. Of course Mike had fallen for her, wanted to help her, and of course he doesn't want to talk about his marriage. Mike isn't the sort of man to cheat on his wife, but God, why is life such a mess?

"And you're helping me because I remind you of her?" he says. "Because you think I am her?" It makes sense, of course, so he doesn't know why it should _hurt_ him that this is all about Molly.

"You're not Molly any more," Mike says, still staring out of the window. "I don't know if Molly's coming back. You're Jay, and you're in trouble, and whoever you are or were, you're my friend and I want to help you." He draws a deep breath, and turns round to face John. "It's probably not the right time to tell you this, but you really need to understand something."

 _He's going to tell me he loved Molly and he still loves me_ , John thinks. _No, he's going to tell me he loved Molly but he doesn't love me any more._ He's not quite sure which thought is the scarier.

"If you're going to get out of here," Mike says, "you have to stop being John Watson."

 _No!_ he thinks, but he doesn't say anything, forces Molly's breathing to stay even, calm.

"You don't have to be Molly," Mike goes on. "You can be Jay, you can be anybody you want, a man, a woman, neither, both, but they will not let you out of here if you're John Watson. And if you stay in here, the isolation, the stress, the drugs will destroy you and you'll end up psychotic even if you're not already." He shakes his head and then goes on slowly:

"This is ridiculous, I know. If you're Molly, if you're delusional, nothing I can say will change your mind. But if there's one small rational part of Molly that's hearing this or if– and I don't know how it could happen – but if you are John and you're sane as I am, you have to realise this. It's time to let John Watson go. Because that’s the only way that they'll let you out of here and you get to have a life again."

It's very quiet, quiet enough to hear Mike's slightly too fast breathing, as John sits up straight on the bed and steadies his own body and mind. It's not the first tight situation he's been in, after all. Time to stop reacting and start thinking.

"Tell me about Molly," he says at last.

 ***

"So how do I pretend to be a woman?" he asks Mike the next day. "How do I pretend to be Molly Hooper?"

"You don't," Mike says. "I was wrong about that. Everybody here already _knows_ that you're Molly Hooper. You just have to pretend to be sane. And that, Jay, is what we all have to do all the time anyhow."

"But I don't behave like Molly. I don't like fluffy kittens or wear high heels."

"Molly likes cats, but she wears sensible shoes and goes round in trousers and not much make-up, at least in the morgue. I'd recommend combing your hair and shaving your armpits, but you don't have to dress up if you don't want to."

"But Molly's tastes?"

"Trauma followed by a psychotic episode, all kinds of personality changes are possible. There are people who start speaking with a foreign accent when they emerge from a coma; a sudden reluctance to coo over pictures of baby animals isn't going to startle anyone."

"And her friends?"

"They're mostly medics too. You can sit around discussing disgusting illnesses and government cuts, like the rest of us. And besides...I don't know how well her friends really know Molly. I mean, I thought I knew what she was like, and now I'm not sure I ever did."

"You mean now she's turned into John Watson? The other John Watson?"

"The one and only John Watson," Mike said quietly. "You need to remember that, Jay."

***

John's shocked by how easy it is to officially regain his sanity once Mike is helping him work the system.

"Did you ever hear about some experiments by a bloke called David Rosenhan?" Mike asks John soon after they've started their campaign. "He had healthy volunteers pretend to have hallucinations in order to be admitted to psychiatric hospitals. It was incredibly easy for them to get admitted, and incredibly hard for them to get discharged, even when they behaved normally. They only got out when they agreed that they were mentally ill."

"You're taken as sane only when you've admitted to being insane?"

"Yes. But remember: the staff _want_ to believe that what they're doing works. So you smile, and you take your drugs, and you tell them that you can't understand now why you ever believed you were anyone but Molly Hooper. And they let you out."

"And then?"

"We worry about that when we get there. The first thing is a bit of practising at being Molly. So now's the time we start to arrange some visits."

***

The amazing thing about Mike, John realises, is how much he knows about Molly. No, how much he knows about everyone: Mike has a phenomenal memory for the details of people's lives. He remembered about Harry, for God's sake, when he hadn't seen John or her for almost fifteen years. Thanks to Mike's preparation, John sweats his way through visits from carefully selected friends and relatives of Molly. At first he worries they'll spot he's an imposter – ironic after several weeks of desperately hoping that someone will believe he's not Molly. But soon, he comes to see that his visitors are expecting a stranger, someone who has passed into the twilight zone of the mentally ill and cannot ever be the same person again. Molly's parents come and John frets through their uneasy fussing over their daughter, only to have Mike say that Molly would probably have had the same reaction.

It's all going so well that the clinic is starting to talk about discharging him, and he feels an odd terror about that. Only a few weeks and he's already in danger of becoming institutionalised.  No, it's more that he has no idea what to do next. No, it's really that the only thing that he wants to do is absolutely out of the question.

"You have to stay away from John Watson," Mike reminds him, as they sit on a bench on the terrace. It's freezing cold, but John's allowed outside now he's given up trying to escape, and it's somewhere else private to talk. "You know you do, Jay. Getting in contact with him, stalking him, anything like that is guaranteed to get you sectioned again."

"So what do I do? I've got no home, no job, no money, not even my army pension any more."

"You're on extended sick leave from Barts at the moment, _Molly_ , so don't worry about that side of it," Mike says. "As for where to live, would you be happy in her flat?"

"What's the alternative?" He feels he's been alone for so long, ever since he got back to London. It's one of the things he misses most from army life, the companionship of barracks and mess-halls.

"One possibility," Mike says slowly, "is that you come and stay with me for a while. Well, as long as you need."

"But won't your wife–" he begins, and then sees the look of shock on Mike's face. "What is it?"

"If you're John, how do you know I got married? If you're Molly, how do you not know I got divorced?"

There's no ring on Mike's plump fingers, John suddenly registers. Why hadn’t he realised that before? Because...because he takes Mike for granted, and he always has done.

"John could have read it in the alumni magazine," he says slowly. "Molly could have forgotten it amid all the trauma."

"True," Mike says, and then he just sits there in silence, regarding the almost-bare flower beds with a surely inappropriate level of concentration.

"When did you get divorced?" John asks at last, and then winces at the baldness of the question.

"A couple of years ago."

"It was Miriam, wasn't it?"

"Lillian," Mike says.

"Sorry."

"It doesn't matter. Not that big a deal. Just under three years together, a couple of years married. Lillian was on the rebound, you see. She had a nasty breakup, looking for stability, I guess. Only after a while, stability started not to be exciting enough, and she found someone who was more fun."

"That's tough."

"These things happen. But she did up the house quite nicely, so it's not going to be complete bachelor squalor if you come. And the primroses in the garden are coming out already. Though as I said, you may be better off in Molly's, _your_ flat. Or we could even try and find you somewhere else to stay."

There's something else that Mike's not saying, but John's brain is still so slow that it takes him forever to think about it. Mike invites John to stay with him. Fine. No, Mike invites John in Molly's body to stay with him. Divorced Mike. People will talk.

"If I come and stay with you is everyone going to think we're moving in together?" he asks.

"Quite possibly, which might be awkward for you, Jay. Maybe you would be better off in Molly's flat. I don't want you worrying about things."

Worrying about what? What does it matter what people think about Molly? She'd have been a damn sight more sensible falling for Mike than for bloody Sherlock Holmes. No, it's not just that. _Think, John, think._ Mike still believes he's Molly and she'll worry that Mike will do something inappropriate if she comes to stay with him? Or Mike realises that he's John, but thinks _he'll_ worry that Mike will do something inappropriate if he comes to stay with him? If he only knew exactly what Mike thought, it would be easier.

He keeps on asking Mike the same question: _Who do you think I am? John or Molly_? And Mike keeps on giving the same safe, evasive answer: _I think you're Jay._ So he asks again, and this time Mike looks at him for a long time, the way he must look at his students, wondering how to get the facts into their thick heads, and says:

"I think you're Molly, because that is the only rational thing I can think. I believe, completely irrationally, that you are John. I _know_ that you are Jay and that I don't want to do anything that would upset you."

There's a warm glow in John's stomach that Mike has finally accepted that he is John. But in that case, why should there be any problem about him staying with Mike? They shared a flat at uni, after all, and he's grown up enough now not to nick Mike's beer from the fridge. Oh, but there's still the problem of Molly's body. One of the things that John finds hardest to remember about being a woman is modesty. Covering himself, herself, up all the time. Mike's probably worried that John's going to catch him staring too hard at Molly's breasts and freak out.

It's easy to say that sort of thing wouldn't bother him, but he knows he's still jittery, gets spooked easily. He's come worryingly near to attacking Mike once already. He has to know what he can cope with, and also let Mike know that he's comfortable about physical contact.

The easiest way to do that, he decides, is probably to kiss Mike. On the scale of rash things he's done, this is nowhere up with invading Afghanistan. Or going off with strange women to inspect even stranger experiments. Besides, the psychiatrists might be watching and _Molly_ is surely the kissing type. The kissing men type.

"Mike," he says softly, "whatever you do, it won't upset me." And then he leans over and kisses Mike's mouth. It's warm and soft – like the rest of Mike – and it feels _good_ , so he decides just to keep going till Mike objects. Gentle pressure from Mike's responsive lips, but it'll be easier if he gets his arm round Mike's neck, pulls him in just a bit closer. He craves this touch, he realises, even if it's another man's. But Mike's body isn't like the hard taut planes of the soldiers' bodies that he's spent years patching up. Mike's skin is smooth, soft, all gentle curves, and though his arms are coming round John now, they're terribly cautious, tracing over Molly's body as if John is breakable. Well he isn't, and now he realises this is what his body needs.

He tightens his grip on Mike, pushing his body into his. There's a slightly odd squashy sensation round his front, which is presumably Molly's breasts, and then lower down he feels something pressing into his thigh, which he realises abruptly is Mike's erection. And there's also a tension building in his own muscles, in his groin, which feels oddly as if he'd be getting an erection if he still had anything to get erect. He wants to keep rubbing his body, Molly's body, against Mike, explore the exciting possibilities of friction, cloth against cloth, skin against skin...But no, he has to stop right now, before he loses control completely. It's been so long, too long...

His mouth comes reluctantly off Mike's and Mike's arms detach themselves immediately from John. Mike's grey eyes are darkened with arousal, and he's panting slightly, and he just sits there not saying anything. John has to say something, doesn't he, but his brain seems scrambled, only now suddenly catching up with what's his body's been doing.

"So what was it like the first time _you_ kissed a man?" John blurts out, and realises that's about the stupidest thing possible to say.

"A lot less pleasant than that," Mike says, in a voice that's trying very hard to sound normal. "His name was Gary and he was extremely drunk."

"Oh God, I remember. Gary Mayhew decided he was going to teach you how to French kiss properly, didn't he, so you could wow the girls at the next disco?" He smiles at the memory of that long-ago night in their flat and then he sees Mike's face go pale.

"John," Mike says, in the hushed, shocked tone of someone who's just been told he's got cancer. "It is...you really are John Watson, aren't you?"

He nods and Mike sits there and looks at him, blinking behind his spectacles. He's never really believed it, has he, and now he does. Now he's heard something that Molly, that Harry, that anyone else couldn't possibly know.

"Mike," John says, "it's OK." It isn't, of course, but he doesn't know what else he can say.

"John," Mike whispers again. "Oh my God, John. What do we do?"

"The same as before," he says. "We can't do anything till I'm out of here."

"Right. Of course," Mike says, and John can see him scramble back to practicalities. "When are they talking about discharging you?"

"Friday, if they're happy with my progress. Three more days, Mike, and I'm a free man! Woman, I mean."

"John, I mean Jay," Mike says. "I think...if it's all right with you, maybe I shouldn't come in and visit for a few days."

"I–"

"I promise I'll be here on Friday to collect you, but I need time to get my head round this. And I'm scared...I'm scared that I'll say the wrong thing and get you into trouble." Mike's almost gabbling now. "I'm really, really sorry, but is that OK, Jay?"

"It's fine," he lies. Three days without Mike is almost unimaginable, but he knows what the shock of finding out about this can do to someone. "I'll be OK, I can handle the shrinks."

"If you're sure," Mike says, scrambling up from the bench. "I'm not running away, I swear it, if you need me I will come, but I...I have to work out what to do next."

He hurries away without so much as a handshake, and John sits on the bench and breathes in the chilly air. And reminds himself that with Mike or without him there's still a battle to be won. A battle to prove he's sane.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John may be leaving the clinic, but what does he do next?

That afternoon at the clinic, John's therapy session is with Donna King, who's at once his favourite member of staff, and the most dangerous. She's a large, clumsy, middle-aged blonde, with a manner so sympathetic that he finds himself wanting to tell her the truth about _everything_. Which, of course, will get him stuck in here permanently.

"How are you feeling today, Jay?" she asks.

"Good," he says, and remembers to smile, because Molly has a nice smile. "I enjoyed getting outside for a bit, even if it is freezing."

"So your mood is positive, that's good. And have you been having any disturbing thoughts?" They go through a familiar litany, intended to reassure her that he's not delusional or likely to do anything dangerous on her watch. And then Donna beams at him short-sightedly and asks: "Is there anything else you feel it would be useful to talk about?"

He's not sure what to say, but he needs to say something, show he's cooperating. "About what?" he asks cautiously.

"Do you feel ready to talk about some of your relationships with other people, Jay? Shall we start, perhaps, with your feelings about Sherlock Holmes?"

He's always resisted talking about Sherlock, afraid he'll betray his anger, not sound like Molly – sane, healthy Molly – but suddenly he knows what to say, the true lies he can tell.

"I...the first time I met him I thought he was the most brilliant, charismatic, fascinating man I'd ever met," he says. Which is true, of course; even now, he can't forget the thrill he felt in those few minutes of the meeting at Barts. There is part of him that can easily understand why Molly was obsessed by the man.

"And now?" Donna asks, gently.

"I think he's dangerous. Doesn't care what he might do to other people." Whatever it was that Sherlock had been building, it had been _wrong_. And whether he thought that it was Molly Hooper or John Watson stuck in a mental hospital as a result of the accident, he hadn't bothered to come and see them.

"And that dangerous side to Sherlock no longer appeals to you?"

He shakes his head, and Donna makes a note. He doesn't try and read what she's writing. Molly doesn't have trust issues. He just concentrates on sitting there quietly and looking normal.

"And what do you feel now about John Watson?" Donna asks. This one's he expecting, and he has his answer off almost pat.

"I don't really know much about him," he says. "I mean, I heard all about him from Mike, of course." That is the agreed line, the agreed lie of everyone now. That his detailed knowledge of John Watson comes from things that Mike Stamford has let slip over the years. It doesn't fit the facts, of course, but it's a comforting lie that keeps away the shadows of stalkers, and identity theft, and scientifically impossible events.

"What did you feel when you heard Mike talk about him?" Donna asks.

"That Dr Watson sounded exciting, glamorous," he says smoothly. "But I only met him once and he was quite ordinary: small, and a bit funny looking."

"You had fantasised about him, maybe even about being him?" Donna says. "A doctor like you, but a hero, a warrior, as well. And when you met him, what did you feel then?"

"I suppose the reality was disappointing and I ended up clinging to the fantasy."

"But you're not doing that now?"

"War isn't romantic. It's messy and brutal and John Watson was a casualty of it."

"Not a hero, then?"

"Not to me."

Donna smiles a wise smile. "Let's go onto some of the other people around you, how you feel about them at the moment. About Mike Stamford, for example." That's a new question, but an understandable one, he supposes, especially if anyone saw them together in the garden.

"He's my friend, a very good friend. He's done so much for me while I've been in here."

"Your feelings towards him are friendly. Do you want to expand on that a bit more, Jay?"

"I enjoy his company. I look forward to his visits. He cheers me up, he's there when I need help. I trust him." Donna sits there, and waits patiently. Waiting for him to say the thing that he suddenly realises he should have known long before.

"I love him," John says. "I can't imagine being without him. It would _hurt_ being without him."

"Even though he could also be described as 'small and a bit funny looking'? Dr Stamford's not a glamorous figure, is he?"

"He doesn't need to be. He's a good man, and that's what counts."

"And Sherlock Holmes?"

"He's not a good man. Mike's worth a hundred of him." And beneath Donna's professional composure, he can see the pleasure in the fact that Molly has finally, finally recognised that basic truth.

***

When Mike turns up on Friday morning he looks tired, but otherwise almost back to his normal cheery self. Which is probably just as well because John's practically climbing the walls with nerves. They're not really going to let him out, are they? They’re going to decide at the last minute that his care plan isn’t ready, or he shouldn’t be staying with Mike. Even though one of the team writing the care plan is an ex-student of Mike’s, and every possible issue has been discussed, it’s all going to get postponed or prevented somehow. But apparently it isn't, and Mike drives him out of the gates and off to a cafe.

"Give you a decent cup of tea for once," he says, grinning, "and then, if you need anything, we can go shopping."

For about an hour it's marvellous being out of the hospital, being free, and then suddenly it's too much, scary even.  John had almost forgotten how frantic London is, that there are just too many loud, busy people crammed together in a few square miles. Too much of everything, till his ears and head and body are aching. So Mike takes him off to his small house in Bromley, and there's a peacefulness amid the book-crammed rooms that's very different from the sterile inoffensiveness of the clinic.

"The first thing is to get the drugs out of your system," Mike says, gently. "But you'll need to take it easy while you're doing that, and we can't do it too quickly, because olanzapine withdrawal can be pretty nasty."

Mike's right, of course: for a couple of weeks he feels so grotty that he can't do much more than flop around the house, and his state isn't helped by experiencing his first ever period. It's nothing like as bad as being shot, but it's still unpleasant. But Mike cheerily keeps him supplied with painkillers and hot water bottles and he gets through it OK.

"Who'd be a woman?" Mike says smiling, as they're having supper the first evening that John can face a proper meal again. "Still, Jay, at least you don't have to shave everyday and you're not going to lose your hair."

"Yeah, but it was a nasty shock. I should have paid more attention to gynaecology lectures all those years ago, shouldn't I?" John says.

"Yes, you should have done. But you always did rely on me for your lecture notes, didn't you, John?"

It's the first time Mike's called him by that name since the day on the terrace, and John looks up at him in surprise.

"I...should you be calling me that?"

"I can't in public, Jay, you know that. You'll have to...we'll have to watch ourselves. But I think, for your own sanity, you need somewhere where you can still be John. And given how far back we go, maybe I can help a bit." Mike gets up, and goes over to his desk in the corner, and produces a large folder that he plonks down beside John.

"Mementos I could find from your time at Barts," he says. "There's probably more I could dig out, but this is a start."

John starts to look through the file, his food forgotten. Photos, yellowing worksheets, old cuttings from the student mag about John and Mike and the rest of the gang.  A programme from the production of _Aladdin_ Mike had roped him into: Mike as the Genie of the Lamp and John as a bandit.  Chunks of his past life that he's forgotten, but now start to flood back.

"Lillian was always at me to chuck things out, but I'm just a hoarder," Mike says, about three hours of reminiscing later. "Never thought it would come in so handy, though." He picks up a photo of the two of them. "You haven't changed much, have you, John?" And then stops, and bites his lip.

"You mean, other than the sex-change and total body swap?" John says, and starts giggling.

"Well, you are the only bloke I know who looks better than when he was at med school," Mike replies, in between his own chuckles.

"Oh God, who'd have thought we'd end up like this?" John says, after a bit. "It was all easier back then, wasn't it?"

"You’ve forgotten how hard the studying was," Mike replies, "but I'm afraid you may be about to get a reminder."

"What do you mean?"

"I...I ought to get back to work, and as for you, well, it's probably not good for your mental health just sitting around here doing nothing. So you maybe need to start working out what you do next."

"I can't just take over Molly's job, though. I'm not a pathologist, and I can't pretend to be one."

"I know," Mike says, "but I can't see you as anything but a doctor, Jay. So, I was thinking..."

"You've planned this all already, haven't you?" John says. It's typical of Mike that he's been already been working out the next step, while John's just been drifting.

"I brought back a few textbooks with me, thought you might have a look at them. Get your mind back in gear, check there are no after-effects from all you've been through."

John knows that Mike's still worried about that, that John might somehow be permanently damaged from his assorted traumas. He looks at John – at Molly – sometimes, when he thinks John won't notice, as if he's trying to work out what exactly is inside Molly's head now. Looks, but doesn't touch.

"OK," he says, "I'll give it a go, but my concentration's still shot to hell." Then he remembers something else. "Did you find out anything about the gym membership?" he asks.

"Davina said Molly had joined one, so I've been trying to dig out the paperwork," Mike replies.

"Any luck?" It's almost scary how easily he's been able to take over Molly's life since he's moved in with Mike. People are so embarrassed about Molly's supposed short-term memory loss that they're prepared to tell her all sorts of details they shouldn't do. And Mike has been surprisingly ingenious at getting them control of Molly's finances.

"Yeah, finally got hold of the details, after some ringing around. I don't think she's been more than twice, but she's still got a standing order. It's one of the big chains, and I think they've got a branch in Bromley, so I'll see if we can get her membership swapped over to there."

"Or maybe we could get a joint membership," John says, and then winces at his own tactlessness. He does think Mike needs to exercise more, eat better – it's one of the reasons he's starting to do some cooking, rather than them relying on takeaways – but he doesn't want to get at Mike, not after all he's done for him.

***

John loves being back at the gym, and Molly's soon doing regular workouts. It's a struggle, at first – her body's flexible, but not very strong – but it feels so good.

Unlike the studying, which is _horrendous_. He stares for hours at the textbooks and he can't remember anything.

"I'm too old for this," he tells Mike a few days later. "Do Barts need someone to sweep their floors?"

"You've forgotten how to study, Jay," Mike replies cheerfully. "Just staring at a chapter isn't going to help. You need some proper note-taking for a start, and then there are other techniques–"

"You're going to say flash cards," he protests. "I am _not_ using flash cards." But somehow he ends up doing a lot of what Mike suggests, because Mike is a natural teacher, has been as long as John's known him. Or perhaps John's brain hasn't packed up completely, after all.

It is getting more and more like being back at medical school, if the world's most sedate and middle-aged medical school. John spends his time studying or playing sport, and then Mike comes home and tells him the latest academic gossip, and they lounge around eating supper in front of the telly, or go off to hear a band. At the weekend they go to the pub with Mike's friends or just crash out at home. If John had imagined a life like this five years ago, he'd have expected to die of boredom.  Now it seems real, sane. He's starting to realise he was permanently on edge in the army, caught in an endless cycle of excitement and misery. How he'd come almost to take it for normal that his colleagues, his _friends_ would end up dead or injured. It's wonderful simply not keeping going to funerals any more.

***

The one awkward thing, the one nagging thing is sex, or rather the lack of it. Mike says slightly awkwardly a week or two after John moving in that if he wants to have anyone stay the night, that's fine, but even though John's libido has revived now he's off the drugs, he can't cope with the thought of anyone. It's bound to mess up the delicate equilibrium between his head and body. He's mostly come to terms with officially being a woman, is learning how to cope with being called 'Molly', even though he prefers 'Jay'. But dating still seems like several steps too far.

Besides, there's Mike. It would feel wrong to get involved with anyone else, even casually, with Mike around. In fact, he keeps on finding his mind drifting back to that day on the terrace, wondering what would have happened if he'd gone further. The problem is...

The problem is not only Mike's hint about John finding someone else. It's also that Mike literally hasn't touched him since that day at the clinic. Not the comforting hugs he'd been willing to give Molly, or the casual physical gestures of two old mates sharing a house. Mike's carefully keeping his distance, and John suspects he may still secretly be freaked out about that aspect of the body swap. After all, Mike fancied Molly, but he's definitely straight, he's probably turned off by the thought of sleeping with John. And even though John now finds the sight of Mike infinitely endearing, when he dreams he's always still a man, and it's women he wakes up blearily wanting to shag.

***

Tonight, though, the dream isn't about women, and John's sweating when he wakes. He goes to the bathroom to clean himself up, and there in the dark is Mike, getting a drink of water. He's obviously had a disturbed night as well.

"You OK, Jay?" Mike mutters sleepily, short-sighted eyes gazing vaguely at him.

"Yeah," he says, "Just had a bad dream, that's all. Be fine in a minute."

Mike's hands come up to hold John's shoulders. "Jay," he says again, with sudden concern. "Are you getting flashbacks about Afghanistan? Or the clinic?"

Mike's touch is warm and gentle and _good_ , and it's suddenly funny. John takes a step forward and lets Molly's face slide against Mike's neck, laughing into it.

"Neither," he says, "I was dreaming I had a multiple-choice test and couldn't answer the questions.  Goddamnit, Mike Stamford, you've given me exam nightmares again."  John's arms stretch around Mike, and he's giggling into his shoulder, and when Mike's arms come round him, drawing Molly's slender body against Mike's bulk, they fit together perfectly. It's Mike who starts to kiss _him_ this time, gently on the forehead, and then John's mouth finds Mike's lips and he closes his eyes, because lips are lips and he likes kissing.

He dreamily snogs away for ages, he's missed this so much, and it's Mike who finally pulls away his mouth and asks breathlessly: "Are you sure you know what you're doing, Jay?"

"I want this," John replies, and then realises that's not all. "I want _you_ , Mike. If that's OK?"

"Yes," Mike says gently. "More than OK, actually. I did, I did hope that, I did dream..." He trails off, but his hands stay firmly wrapped round Molly.

"Then why didn't you say anything? After what happened at the clinic?"

"You were on drugs, then," Mike protests, "I wasn't sure you really knew what you were doing. And...it took me a while to get my head round it. Freaked me out for a bit, till I realised that all the labels didn't matter."

"I thought you weren't interested," John says. "You said if I wanted to bring someone home that was fine."

"I didn't want to seem pushy," Mike says apologetically. "You're a very attractive woman, John, Jay, you could have your pick of...well, whoever you want."

"I want you," says John. "I want to do this." Anything seems possible right now, in this hour before dawn. "So let's get on with it."

"Right," Mike says, and then suddenly adds, "Erm, actually, no. Not yet."

"Why not?" John can somehow tell Mike is blushing, even in the dim light.

"Because I've just realised I haven't got any condoms. And I adore you, Jay, but the thought of a pregnant John Watson is just too awful for words." John can't help it, he starts giggling at that, and Mike is snorting with laughter too. And then he says that he'll pick up some freebie condoms from Barts at lunchtime, and John suddenly knows that this is going to work.

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John and Mike may finally be going to meet a problem for which Mike doesn't have a carefully considered plan...

By the evening, of course, John knows that sleeping with Mike is bound to be a disaster. He's still nervous about his body and he's never had sex with a man before. Mike's never had sex with a man in a woman's body before. It's not _if_ something's going to go wrong, but when. The awkwardness, when Mike gets home from work, is terrifying, and they somehow end up sitting and eating almost in silence, slumped on the settee with an episode of _Star Trek_ on.

He needs to take the initiative, John decides, because Mike is always diffident around women. But they can't just pretend they're on a date, their friendship doesn't work like that. And he doesn't want to bring alcohol into the equation, either. They both have to be clear-headed about what they're getting into. For a moment he's tempted to leave it, wait for a better moment, but that may not happen. Even though it's going to be a disaster, Mike is the only person he can imagine having sex with, the only person who accepts him as he is. And he also wants to repay Mike in some small way for all he's done; give him the gift of Molly's body. So when the credits start rolling on _Star Trek_ , he leans forward, and puts his arm round Mike's neck, and kisses his cheek, and says: "I think we should do this."

"Are you sure?" Mike says.

"Yes. So let's go up to your bedroom and get naked. Right now." The words sound odd in Molly's voice, but John hopes that that, and the quick brush of Molly's hand across Mike's trousers, as she stands up, will start firing Mike's brain in the right way. John sets off for the bedroom, and Mike follows in silence.

John's carefully tidied up Mike's bedroom, and he's made other preparations as well. He starts to strip, feeling he should be doing it seductively, but not sure how. But he has got Molly's crimson lace knickers and bra on, and even though they're rather uncomfortable, he wins an appreciative smile from Mike when he sees them. And another when John unties Molly's hair, and lets it hang in a shiny strokeable mass down past his shoulders.

"What do you think?" he asks, turning to Mike.

"You have a very...sexy body, Jay," Mike says, slightly nervously. "But perhaps, if you didn't keep your arms crossed?"

"Sorry," he says, putting his hands on his hips. He has no idea if that looks more alluring, but Mike doesn't seem to mind. He's sitting down on the bed, starting rather awkwardly to take his shoes and socks off.

"Would it be easier for you if we had the lights off?" Mike asks.

"No," John says. He's really not sure he can get the positioning right in the dark, and besides, Mike needs to see Molly, concentrate on her. "But would you prefer just the bedside light on?"

"Yes," Mike says, "and...um, maybe if we don't talk too much it would be easier."

It's Molly who's the real turn-on for Mike, John suspects, not Jay, let alone him. And Mike's also embarrassed about his own body, which isn't surprising. Once he's removed his shirt, there's a bulge to Mike's stomach that make him look vaguely pregnant. But there's also something strangely comforting about Mike's size, a sturdy unbreakable quality, someone to hold onto who won't slip away.

"If we just lie down together for a bit," John suggests, "that might help." Mike doesn't have much of an erection yet, but if anything is going to encourage it, it's going to be getting his hands all over Molly's body.

And when they're side by side on the bed, it is immediately easier. The soft, warm touch of Mike's skin against John's hands, the press of legs intertwining, even the strange new sensation of Mike running his fingers through Molly's long hair is comforting, good, flooding John's body with memories, sensations. For a while, this is all he wants, someone to hold, to let his body know that he's not alone any more.

What's he not sure about is the next stage. How to take this warm, gentle, safe pleasure and turn it into something urgent, dangerous. But then Mike breaks off their kiss and whispers: "Let me go down on you."

"OK," John says, because at least Mike will know what he's doing. It's just him who's suddenly panicked, not sure how his unfamiliar body will respond. Maybe if he thinks of some gorgeous, sexy girl...No, he can't do that, fantasise about someone else; it wouldn't be fair to Mike and there are already too many people involved here. Just lie down and try and relax Molly's body, let his mind drift away.

And then Mike's tongue, which has been tracing the inside of Molly's thighs, moves up, and John's brain shuts down for a moment.  Mike's tongue against his – clitoris, is it? Mike's stubby fingers teasing – a tiny part of John's brain is vaguely trying to remember diagrams of the female genitalia, even as most of it is just going _wow!_ It's like receiving an electric shock, except entirely different.

"More?" Mike mutters, half-raising his head.

"More," John says, and then his mind gives up on forming words. Gives up on everything, practically, except pressure and warmth and pleasure – yes, yes, yes, that – nerve endings firing, sensations that he can't classify because they're all fusing into one huge blur of bliss. His body pushes into Mike's mouth, wanting this, the only thing in the world that matters. He's gasping, shrieking – he didn't know even Molly's voice could get that high – and by the time Mike finally stops, John is a boneless, inarticulate puddle of contentment. Bits of his brain have probably short-circuited irretrievably and he's not sure if he can move. But he'd be quite happy to stay in bed for the rest of his life, as long as Mike was there too.

"That was amazing," he says woozily to Mike. "Wonderful." In the dim light he can just see a broad grin on Mike's sweaty face.

"I'm short, fat and forty," Mike replies. "I have to give anyone who's prepared to sleep with me some incentive to do it again."

"You've certainly learnt something teaching anatomy all these years."

"I'm not allowed to do that kind of practical in lectures," Mike says, grinning. "Shame, because it might boost my student evaluations." They both end up laughing and it gives John a bit of time to peel himself off the sheets, get his brain back into gear.

"Your turn now," he says, "though I can't hope to match that."

"If you come on top of me," Mike says, "that's probably the most comfortable position for you, and I get to see you properly."

"OK," John says. Mike rolls onto his back, his hand pumping at his erection, trying to get it firmer.

"Need some help?" John says, and leans over and lowers his mouth to Mike's penis. He's had lots of blowjobs, but he's never given one, so it feels back-to-front and upside-down. But judging by the hitching gasps Mike's giving, the way his hips are starting to thrust up, it's working.

"Condom," Mike says abruptly, in a choked voice. John passes him one, and Mike puts it on, slowly, carefully, while John straddles him, grateful that he's been working Molly's thigh muscles in the gym. He also feels glad now that Mike's erection is only average size. It's still probably going to be uncomfortable, he thinks, as Mike looks up rather nervously at him, but he's almost sure he's not a virgin and vaginas are designed for this, after all. Basic anatomy, really, and Mike's good at that.

It takes a bit of manoeuvring, but then John's in position, and he starts to rock forward gently. He smiles reassuringly down at Mike and wonders if he ought to flaunt his breasts a bit, though they're not really big enough to flaunt well. And from Mike's look of concentration, not much is registering north of his waist. But John teases Mike's nipples with his fingers anyway, just for fun, and rocks a little harder, and Mike gives a soft groan, and comes with a shudder. Then he lies there panting, eyes closed.

"Don't die on me now, Mike," John protests.

"I'm just shamming," Mike says, without opening his eyes, "so I get given the kiss of life."

"Well, OK, then," John says, and he rolls off Mike, and brushes  Molly's hair out of his eyes, and goes back to a bit more snogging of Mike, just for good luck.

"Oh God," Mike says after a bit, shaking his head. "Just think how much easier it'd have been if we'd both worked this out in medical school!" And then they just lie there in a giggly heap for ages.

***

They may not be teenagers, but they manage a surprising amount of sex in the next few weeks, which cheers John up during the depressing process of job hunting. Molly's not qualified for all the jobs he could do, and vice versa, so it's a complete mess. And then a letter arrives from Barts marked 'Private and Confidential', and John knows this is the end of the line.

"I've got to go and see Personnel," he announces to Mike in the evening. "And you know I told the occupational health people the honest truth, that I can't go back to the path job, that I don't feel capable of it any more. So what can they do but sack me?"

"Don't panic, Jay," Mike says, coming over and hugging him. "I don't think that's what they're planning."

"What have you heard, Mike?"

"Nothing officially, of course."

"But?" The advantage of Mike having spent twenty years at Barts is that not only does he have access to everywhere, and offices at all the sites, but he also knows everyone in the system, from the cleaners to the trust board.

"They're trying to sort out an alternative job for you. I can't tell you more, Jay, but go along and you might be pleasantly surprised."

***

John's not just surprised but shocked at what Personnel offer him, and what with trying to remember to be Molly, he probably comes across as completely incoherent. He staggers off to Mike's office afterwards, clutching a pile of papers.

"What they're offering, I think," he tells Mike, "is a complete retraining package. But you have a look, because there must be a catch somewhere. It's too good to be true."

He hands the contract to Mike, who starts reading carefully through it at his desk, flicking back and through the pages. John half expects him to start scribbling notes in the margins.

"I knew they were planning to offer you a specialist training post," Mike says at last, "but I didn't know they'd say any specialism, because some of them are like gold dust. Extra support if you need it, _and_ they keep you on Molly's salary..."

"It's absurdly generous," John says. "They say they have funding from a special charitable grant for the rehabilitation of staff with mental health problems. But even so, it doesn't make sense." Then he sees a frown appear on Mike's face. "What is it?"

"They're buying you off, Jay," Mike says, looking up at him. "Did you see the name of the trust?"

"No, they didn't mention it."

"It's lurking here in the small print. The Holmes 2010 Trust."

"As in Sherlock?"

"His family have given a lot of money to Barts over the years. It explains some of the...privileges Sherlock has here. And if you look through the contract, there's a clause about not doing anything that may damage the reputation of either Barts or the Holmes Trust."

He points to a clause that John hasn't previously registered, and John finally disentangles the verbiage enough to see that Mike is right.

"So what do I, we do?" he asks.

"You let yourself be bought off," Mike says quickly. "You sign on the dotted line and officially forget what happened to you."

"Are you sure?"

"What else do we do, Jay? No-one's going to believe us, anyway."

Mike's right, of course, and yet John's irrationally angry again, with the world, and with Mike for putting up with it. And then he has an idea.

"Can we go down to the morgue?" he demands.

"If you're sure you'll be OK."

"I want to see it again."

***

John hasn't been down to the basement since the accident, and when they get into the morgue he immediately feels uncomfortable. It's cold, of course, and though the staff down there recognise Molly and say hello, she doesn't belong down there anymore and they can sense it.

"It was over there, in that storeroom, or whatever it is," he tells Mike. "It was locked."

"It isn't now," Mike says, and opens the door. And it's a room. A tiny room, with a few bits of medical junk in it. It needs painting, and the vinyl in one corner of the floor is slightly scuffed, as if something heavy has sat there and then been removed hastily. All that remains of that afternoon, the only tangible proof he hasn't dreamt the whole thing. And Mike is right, of course, it's not enough, it's never been enough. He'll just make them both sound insane.

Mike's hand reaches out and touches his shoulder gently.

"Jay?" he murmurs.

"What do you think Sherlock was planning to build, Mike?" he demands. "And who was he planning to use it on?"

"I don't know," Mike replies.

"Molly?"

"I don't _know_."

"Do you think that trust fund, for helping people with mental health problems, was set up before or after the accident? Do you think it was a precaution, in case something went wrong, someone at Barts ended up with brain damage?"

"I think," Mike said, and there's an unexpected firmness in his voice, "that you have to let it go. Whatever Sherlock was planning, he's been scared off. It's over, Jay. We are where we are, and we have to make the best of it."

John turns to look at the plump, serious face of the man he loves. "You're right," he says. "OK, let's grab some coffee and talk about training programmes."

***

John spends the next morning poring over the College of Emergency Medicine's regulations, trying to work out if there's any way he can shave a year or two off the time to become a consultant. Mike will probably know who to talk to about that, he thinks. But when John gets a phone call from him at lunchtime, it's clear that something’s wrong.

"I'm sorry to spring this on you, Jay," Mike says hurriedly, "but I've just had a phone call and I'm really not sure what's best to do."

Given that Mike has a carefully considered plan for dealing with most things short of a zombie attack, that's more than a little worrying.

"What is it?" John demands, thinking: _redundancy, cancer, Harry's liver has finally packed in_.

"I got a call from Dr, from John Watson. Sherlock's flatmate," Mike says, and the fear in his voice is palpable. "He, she wants to come to Barts and talk to you."

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Is it time for Molly to give John his life back?

When Molly walks into Mike's office at Barts, the weird part isn't meeting 'Molly Hooper' for the first time; it's meeting John Watson. Because she can spot him immediately inside her body and she wonders how anyone else was ever fooled. There's something in the way the woman sits, the upright, still alertness of the soldier. She can imitate that quite well now, but the posture comes naturally to him. But then, of course, he isn't pretending to be Molly.

"Hello," she says, "you're...Jay, aren't you?" He stands up and shakes her hand. His grip, Molly's grip, is a bit too firm for a woman's; so is hers, now.

"Please sit down, Dr Watson," Jay says, indicating a chair in the cluttered office. "Or would you prefer to be called Molly?" He’s staring hard at her, and she realises that it's only now that he _knows_ that there's been a complete swap, that she's been affected too.

"No," she says. "I'm not Molly any more."

"I suppose not," he says quietly, and then he just sits there. She's been rehearsing what she has to tell him, but she can't think how to start, and in the face of his silence she suddenly finds herself babbling.

"You're looking good, Jay. You've put on a bit of weight, two, three pounds, but you probably needed it. I mean, I was a bit..." She tails off.

"The weight gain's a side-effect of the anti-psychotics," Jay says. "But I'm off them now."

"That's good," she says. "And how have you been getting on, what have you been doing?" It's ridiculous how Mollyish she is sounding once again.

"Oh, you know," he says, "Got electrocuted, woke up in someone else's body, got sectioned. The usual. But you've been having a more exciting time, I gather, Dr Watson."

"It's been amazing!" she says, and launches into a description of the Pink Lady case that includes all the bits she can't put on the blog. Jay listens quietly, till she gets to the chase after the taxi.

"Sherlock had you running across the rooftops, despite the fact that you had a limp? I mean I had a limp. I was walking with a stick, for God's sake."

"Your limp was psychosomatic."

"Yes, I had realised that, thank you."

"But you're not limping now?" she asks.

"No, somewhere along the line that seems to have cleared up. Not my preferred cure, but better than Sherlock Holmes trying to trick my body out of it via parkour. Glad I dodged that one. So what happened after that?"

He's silent again as she carries on with her story, though he looks more and more like someone who thinks that _he's_ not the one in the room with mental health problems. And then Molly tells him about killing the cabbie, and his – her – jaw drops.

"You shot the man at what, fifty, a hundred paces, through two panes of glass, with my Sig?"

"Yes," she says. "Well, we did, I suppose, because it's your body. You're a crack shot, you knew what you were doing."

"I wouldn't have taken a shot like that," Jay says.

"Even to save Sherlock?"

"You might very well have killed him instead. If the bullet deflected even a fraction, or there was an unexpected ricochet. Or the bullet might have gone clean through the cabbie _and_ him."

"He was risking his life anyway," she replies, "with the pill. He does that, sometimes, to prove he's clever."

"Sounds like he's willing to risk your life too."

"Oh, yes," she says, smiling. "He's an idiot, but I guess I am as well."

"I see. That's your idea of fun, is it?"

"Yes," she says. "You know what Mycroft, Sherlock's brother, said the first time I...you...the first time he met John Watson? 'You're not haunted by the war, Dr Watson, you miss it.' And he's right. I'm on the battlefield now–"

"What the _fuck_ are you talking about?" he breaks in, and it's weird to hear that word escape from Molly's prim lips. "What's all this about a war?"

"We're fighting the criminals of London," she says. "Sherlock and me, our own private war."

"You think I _miss_ the war?" Jay, John Watson yells, jumping up, striding across to her, hands coming up as if he's going to grab her by the shoulders, by the throat. "You think it's _fun_?" And then he stops himself, and very slowly sits back down, and says in the just too high voice of Molly when she's trying not to lose it:

"I don't think, Dr Hooper, you have any idea of what a war is like. It is the most God-awful thing on this earth, believe me." His speech is slowing, the pitch of his voice deepening now, as he forces his emotion down. He doesn't like losing control, does he? She realises again how little she knows him.

"And the worst thing of all," he goes on, "is a war that never ends. In Afghanistan I have seen men, women, children die, my friends, the enemy, poor ordinary buggers of civilians who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. I thought when I signed up I could make a difference. But I came to realise that the most I could hope for was not making things worse. We can't win in Afghanistan, we never could do."

"So why did you keep on fighting, if you didn't believe in what you were doing any more?"

He shakes his head. "You don't understand, do you? You really don't get it. Suppose you got disillusioned with Sherlock, fed up about how he behaved. You could walk away from him, couldn't you?”

"I wouldn't," she says. "Why on earth should I?"

"But you could. If I'd walked away from Afghanistan, refused to serve, they'd have put me in prison as a deserter. You're not in a war, Molly Hooper, and don't ever claim you are. You're just playing games."

"I didn't mean..." she breathes, and she sounds like Molly Hooper again, she knows she does. And she cannot bear to return to being pathetic and apologetic. So she straightens up in her chair and gives Jay a John Watson grin.

"Maybe it is a game," she says, "but it's a great game. It's all I ever wanted to do."

"Glad you're happy about it," Jay says. He's back in control of himself again, and she's never heard her own voice sound so dry. "Anything else you wanted to tell me while you're here? Because otherwise, I suggest you head off back to Baker Street."

Beneath the calm, she now realises, the anger is still there. Well, she knows she deserves it; nobody likes a thief.

"I came here," she says, determinedly, "to say it's over. To say that it's time I gave you your body back."

Jay looks across at her, and for a moment there's delight in the brown eyes. And then his head goes down.

"It can't be done," he says, staring at the floor.

"It's been done before."

"The machine's been destroyed."

"It can be rebuilt, Sherlock can rebuild it."

He looks up, scrubbing his hand across his face, Molly's face. "I should have seen that one coming. Sherlock sent you, didn't he, Dr Watson?"

"No. He doesn't know about that. He doesn't know about me."

His brow creases. "How can he not know? The man who knows everything about everybody?"

"It's hard to explain," she says.

***

She can't tell Jay the real answer, because he wouldn't understand; he doesn't know what Sherlock is like. At first, he'd been too obsessively focused on the Pink Lady case to see Dr Watson as more than a handy skull-substitute. Even during the Chinese meal afterwards, Sherlock hadn't been able to stop talking about what had happened. She'd just sat there, as it started to register – Molly Hooper had pulled the trigger on a gun and a man was dead – while Sherlock had talked _at_ her for hours. The possible contents of the pill he'd nearly taken – he was annoyed he hadn't kept it for analysis. The best general strategy to adopt if faced with two bottles, or three or N, only one of which was a bad bottle.  What Moriarty might be, and if there had been some mechanism – unknown to the cabbie – for picking the victims.

"A junior minister among them, what are the odds on that, John? Population of Greater London 7.8 million, a few hundred MPs. Or are there more now? It's not data I've ever bothered to learn. And then you'd have to factor in how many customers he got per day, time of travel – has to be in the evenings, clearly, so the locations he wants are free..."

She'd let his words wash over her and wondered if this was his way of coping with what had happened. Or whether he imagined that John needed the escape of listening to someone else, of losing himself, herself, in Sherlock's world.

She realised, looking back, that the torrent of words had just been the last outpouring before the post-case crash. She was getting used to them now, but at first the sight of Sherlock curled up under a duvet, apparently incapable of doing anything for the best part of two days but drink the cups of tea she brought, had been alarming. She'd have been panicking, if she hadn't been John Watson, who did not panic about anything less than a nuclear holocaust.

It had only been after that episode that Sherlock had once again properly registered her as something more than drink-dispenser and audience. But it was already too late. She could almost see the impossible truth dawn on him, but he couldn't say anything. What could he say? If he said she was Molly and he was wrong, he looked an idiot for suggesting it. If he said she was Molly and he was right, he was an idiot for taking four days to notice. Perhaps it wasn't surprising that he'd taken the path of least resistance, left her to be John Watson, his friend John Watson.

They're never going to talk about it, she knows now. Sherlock can speak at least six different languages, but there are things beyond his vocabulary. She's becoming used to the occasional awkward oblique references to emotions – regret, loneliness, love – that he can never tackle head on. He certainly can't cope with admitting to her that he'd misjudged Molly Hooper, and that she's now become essential to him. But Sherlock is good with gestures as well as words, and the latest one is at once an acknowledgement of her and an apology. He's bought her a cat.

Well, of course, it's not as simple as that. Sherlock has persuaded Mrs Hudson to get a cat, because 221C has suddenly started suffering from a plague of mice. Molly suspects that the plague of mice will mysteriously stop now Toby has arrived, but then that's the point, isn't it? There will be no more mice because Toby is there, it's nothing to do with Sherlock. And similarly, Toby is not their cat, he's Mrs Hudson's. But if Dr Watson wants to play with him, help care for him, that simply proves that he is a nice man who is kind to little old ladies and their pets. If you're an ex-army doctor, you're allowed to be fond of cats without anyone thinking you're girly.

***

Maybe she should explain to Jay about the cat and its significance, but it's just too complicated. And it's her secret, and she's somehow become addicted to secrets, the things she and Sherlock know that no-one else does. So all she says to Jay is: "Sherlock knows who I am, but he prefers not to know. Because, well, it's impossible, isn't it? And it would be irrational of him to take impossible solutions seriously."

"Then why are we talking about this?" Jay's voice was weary.

"Because if we both went and talked to him, he'd have to believe us. And then he can rebuild the apparatus."

"What happened was an accident. He doesn't know how it happened any more than we do."

"It could be replicated. With a bit of experimentation–"

"Stop right there, Dr Watson!" Jay barks out. "Because the answer's no."

"Sherlock can do it, I know he can."

"You're proposing to let a man who surreptitiously built a mind-altering machine carry out further experiments on us? That's...that's a bit worrying, frankly."

She looks at him in sudden realisation.

"You're scared, aren't you?"

"You're suggesting that a mad scientist should tamper with my brain again. I'm thinking scared is probably the right way to go."

"No, it's not just that, is it? You said you wouldn't have taken the shot. And that you wouldn't have run over the roofs after Sherlock. What's happened to you?"

"You mean other than the shot, electrocuted and drugged bit?"

And then the penny drops. "It's the body, isn't it?" she says. "I'm in your body, so I'm brave. You're in mine, so you're not."

"What the _fuck_ has that got to do with anything?"

"You're not you any more, not a soldier, are you? Just ordinary."

Jay – John – lifts his chin very slightly, and then he says mildly: "Dr Watson, did they tell you I attempted to escape from the clinic several times?"

"Yes," she replies, and the guilt almost overwhelms her. It's her who's broken him, smashed his psyche apart.

"The second time was quite...tricky. My room was on the second floor, and there was a drainpipe just within reach. It was only when I was on the drainpipe that I realised they had anti-climb paint lower down and I couldn't get a grip. So my next plan was to go up, see if I could reach the fourth floor, where the staff slept, break into a room and get out that way."

"You did _that_?"

"Well, some of it. You're not really designed for drainpipe shinning, are you, Dr Hooper? You haven't got the upper body strength. So it was a bit hairy and by the time I'd got up there, they'd spotted me, so that was that." He pauses and then adds. "I haven't lost my nerve. I did that because I had to get out, but there's a fine line between bravery and stupidity and I try not to cross it too often."

He smiles at her then, and above Molly's sweet smile there's something old in the eyes.

"You're young and excited, and you're think you're invulnerable because you're with Sherlock," Jay says. "Just take care. Especially if you're relying on my old crock of a body."

"It's perfect."

"I must say, I don't often have beautiful young women being quite so enthusiastic about it."

"It's a soldier's body."

"Ex-soldier. God, it feels a bit like being a used car salesman. 38-year-old body offered in part-exchange, one not too careful previous owner, a few more years running possible with suitable maintenance. Seriously, Dr Watson, if you're going to keep the muscles, you need to go to the gym regularly. Which I suspect you're not good at doing."

"I'm...I'm sorry," she says. She's used to criticism of her body, but not from someone who knows it quite so intimately. "I know my mouth's all wrong, and I'm flat-chested and my bum's a bit big..."

"Molly," he says, "You're healthy and you have a lovely body. It just needs a bit of conditioning, build some strength." He folds his arms and looks at her, assessingly. "If there _was_ a button we could press and go back to who we were, you could still chase after Sherlock. I've seen women soldiers your size who can take down a six-foot man, you just have to learn how."

"No," she says. "It wouldn't work. Sherlock wouldn't want me any more."

"He doesn't want a girl taking part in his war?" Jay asks, sardonically.

"It's not that," she says. If Dr Joanna Watson had come back from Afghanistan, would Sherlock have accepted her as his friend? She can't be sure. "It's not because I'm a woman. It's just he doesn't want Molly."

"And you put up with that?" He's almost yelling again. "Is Sherlock so wonderful, is the sex so wonderful that you're prepared to put up with a man who doesn't respect you?"

"You think this is about sex?" For the first time she feels angry as well. Why are people so blind?

"What else can it be about? If he cared for you, really cared, it wouldn't matter what you looked like. I...if I turned back into John Watson today, Mike would still love me, want me. If he got half his face burnt off, it wouldn't change what I felt about him."

She hadn't believed the rumours she's heard, that Molly Hooper and Mike Stamford are actually sleeping together, and it still makes no sense. Maybe John Watson's brain did get scrambled in all of this, because she's very fond of Mike, but she can't imagine wanting to have sex with him. No, it's probably just that John's obsessed with sex. Because why else would he imagine that that was the reason why she was staying with Sherlock?

"I've never slept with Sherlock," she says. "I probably never will. I think he's asexual, just not interested. It doesn't matter, that's not what this is about."

"What it is about then?"

"I love his mind. I thought I loved his body, but I didn't realise it was his mind that I really loved." It's amazing how she doesn't seem to _need_ sex any more, how she's starting to realise how unimportant it is. After all the times she's been to bed with a man just to make him like her. All the energy she's wasted on the pointless pursuit of being 'sexy'.

"So if it's a meeting of minds, what does it matter to Sherlock whose body it is?" Jay asks.

"Because if I was Molly, if I looked like Molly and was his companion, everyone would say he'd been wrong about her. Because Sherlock thought Molly was a joke, a pathetic woman. But you know what? He was right."

"You hate yourself so much that you think that?"

"No," she says. "Yes. Not really. It's just...if I was back in Molly's body, I'd end up back where I was. I'd end up doing the same stupid, girly things I always did. I've changed, Jay, because the way people look at me has changed. And I don't want to give that up."

"You won't have to. This isn't going to happen."

It's so tempting, then, to walk away. To take advantage of John's reluctance to be experimented on. But she is a soldier now, she is brave. She has to be prepared to do it; to lay down her own life to save another's.

"You don't understand," she says. "I didn't just come here to offer you your body back. I came to offer you your life back. I stole your life and I have to repay it."

Molly, John as Molly, just sits there and looks at her, and then she – he – says at last, very quietly:

"What do you mean about stealing my life?"

"I've got a home, I've got a job to do, I've made new friends: police officers, people on Baker Street, Mrs Hudson, who's our landlady. And I've got Sherlock. And all that should be yours. I stole them from you."

"No," he says. "What you stole from me was a broken body stuck in a bedsit and a tiny army pension, that's all."

There's a weariness to Jay's voice that finally, finally gets Molly's brain fully into gear. She's been an idiot, hasn't she?

"So that explains your curious behaviour towards me," she says slowly.

"I've done nothing."

"That's the curious behaviour," she replies. "It's not just me wanting to run away from myself, after all. You didn't really want John Watson back, did you?"

"I did at first," he says. "But then I realised it wasn't possible."

"You're a man who's used to doing the impossible. But not this time. You haven't been in contact with Harry, have you? Or anyone else from your old life, who might possibly recognise you for who you are, be able to help you."

He shakes his head, and something more clicks in her brain, another bit of the puzzle solved, and she says: "You'd had enough of John Watson, even before that, hadn't you? You kept the gun to kill yourself."

"No," he says quietly. "I kept the gun so I had the option to kill myself. Different matter."

"Why not drugs? You're a doctor." They both know it's a suicide-prone profession.

"Couldn't be sure I'd get a job with access to them. Couldn't be sure I'd ever work again, ever be good for anything again."

"You were just going to give up?" She knows she sounds disappointed. This isn't _her_ John Watson.

"No," he says. "I don't give up easily. But do you know how long I was in the army?"

"You got a medical cadetship when you were eighteen, didn't you?"

"Twenty years ago. I spent half in my life in the army and I didn't know I was good for anything else when I was invalided out. I was _tired_ , Dr Hooper, more tired than you would believe possible, and it was so tempting just to put myself to sleep so I didn't have to wake up, didn't have to face another day of nothingness."

She has destroyed him, after all, she realises.

"I didn't steal your life, did I?" she says. "It's worse. I stole your chance. Your chance to get out of that life was Sherlock Holmes and I took it from you."

"And you took that chance," Jay – John – replies slowly. "Molly Hooper managed to impress Sherlock Holmes. I don't think I would have done. I can't imagine being his friend and I wouldn't want to be. You've got the life you wanted because _you_ fought for it, not me."

"But it's _your_ life!"

"I don't want it." Molly's voice is so soft she can barely hear it. "I do have a life of my own, you know."

"How can you compare that?"

"Very easily, Dr Watson. You talked about a home, friends, a job. I've got the first two now and I'm going to have the third."

"But I've got Sherlock!"

"And I've got Mike, and he is a better person – as a friend, as a lover – than Sherlock could possibly be." He stands up, almost marches up to her, and then inspects her, top to toe.  "You've got what you wanted, Molly Hooper, and good luck to you, because you're going to need it." He pauses and then adds, "I didn't know what I wanted, but I've somehow ended up with what I need.  I wouldn't want to go through the last few weeks again, but I'm not going back. I'm sticking with Jay Hooper, she's my future."

He holds out his hand, and she automatically shakes it.

"I expect we'll see each other around," Jay says, "but for now, good luck and goodbye."

 _How can it be over, just like that_ , she wonders, and then remembers. They're soldiers, both of them, better at actions than words. Time to get on with life, not dwell on the past. So Dr Watson smiles, and leaves the office, and walks out of Barts to make her way home to Baker Street and Sherlock Holmes.

 


End file.
